Mandelson and the Media
The response of the media-political class to the Mandelson scandal has been insightful. It veers from the ‘who could have thought it’, to the ‘I’ve always known this’ to the painfully naive supposition that Mandelson is one rotten apple, rather than a central figure in the ecosystem (or swamp) in which they all co-exist. It’s reminiscent of Omar El Akkad tweet (and book title): “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.”
Here’s SKY News’s Sophie Ridge:
— BELLA CALEDONIA (@bellacaledonia) February 4, 2026
As Saul Staniforth commented: “If Ridge had made this statement a year ago, two years ago, five years ago, ten years ago, it would have been brave & principled & made knowing there would be a personal cost. But making it now? It’s none of those things.”
The BBC were keen to resurrect Mandelson’s failing career (see Laura Kuenssberg here), bringing him onto the World at One only weeks ago, and they were not alone in the attempt to platform him. The New World’s Rats in a Sack column notes [The Spectator performs a rapid u-turn on Mandelson]:
“As revelations about Peter Mandelson continued to emerge from the cesspit of the Epstein files, the Spectator was definitive: “There’s no way back for Mandelson” wrote Alexander Larman on the right wing magazine’s website on February 2. What a difference a week makes! For it was only days earlier that the Spectator was very much facilitating a way back for the disgraced Lord.”
“Mandelson’s views on Reform were splashed across its website and the top of the magazine’s cover, despite a slew of Epstein-related accusations already having stained his reputation and costing him his job as US ambassador.”
Indeed, The Times Matthew Paris was straight out of the blocks trying to resuscitate the great man’s career even at the heart of the greatest scandal of the post-war era:
To be very clear everybody knew, but it was convenient and expedient NOT TO KNOW. It speaks to britain’s strategic weakness that such desperate measures were thought necessary. Here’s the academic Nichola Guyatt pointing out the obvious, in which Jim Pickard from the Financial Times points out that they had written a 2000 word article laying out that emails had shown that while he was Business Secretary and def facto Deputy Prime Minister, he was staying at Jeffrey Epstein’s house in Manhattan while Epstein was in jailr for solicting prostitution from a fourteen-year-old…
“Keir Starmer showed no curiosity whatsoever about what one of his peers had been up to with Jeffrey Epstein.”
An extraordinary two minutes of radio from the FT’s Jim Pickard confirming that everybody knew, and nobody cared pic.twitter.com/fGYoRXj5nr— Nicholas Guyatt (@NicholasGuyatt) February 3, 2026
“Not a lot of Fleet Street followed up that story…” says Pickard.
Due diligence? Vetting for the position of Ambassador? Nah. Everyone knew, and for the Prime Minister and Morgan McSweeney to still be in position tells you everything you need to know about the state of British Democracy and the workings of the media-political class.
As Jonathon Shafi writes in The National [The sociopathic have reaped rewards of our political system | The National] “Individuals like Mandelson must be held to account. But he is a reflection of a system in which wealth and power is exempt from law, democracy and basic human decency.”
The extent of knowledge about Mandelson’s unsuitability for public office, nevermind high-office is displayed by this from Double Down News from FOUR YEARS AGO.
Now they are even clearer: “Peter Mandelson epitomises the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the very closed political and media class that runs Britain” …
“Peter Mandelson epitomises the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the of very closed political and media class that runs Britain”
EXPOSED: Keir Starmer, Jeffery Epstein, Peter Mandelson & the REAL Prime Minister @pularjs pic.twitter.com/vsUq0BwGiM
— Double Down News (@DoubleDownNews) February 3, 2026
We know all this, and yet we are presented by the media with a story of surprise, shock and ‘Oh how can this have come about?’ narrative.
An alternative story also presented, is that Mandelson is some sort of outlier, some sort of rogue figure. Yet we know that he is extremely close to Morgan McSweeney and has been a central figure in the project any remnants of the Left within the Labour Party. As the journalist Barry Malone put it: “The thing about Mandelson is that he’s not some grotesque who managed to infiltrate the political and media establishment. He epitomises it. He embodies it. They cannot distance themselves from that.” In this sense, then the attempts to defend, justify or rehabilitate Mandelson are attempts to defend, justify or rehabilitate the Starmer project itself, which, as we have outlined here The Crisis of the British State faces an existential crisis.
There’s an irony here that the very siloed nature of the media class blindsides them to change. So embedded and indistinguishable are they from the politicians they are supposed to hold to account they are immune to changes in society from which they are detached. This was best seen with the phenomenon of Brexit but could easily happen again with the coming constitutional crisis.
Two more aspects are worth considering here.
One is that it’s worth highlighting profiling and supporting good journalism where it exists. Because even within legacy media there are good journalists, and even though it’s underfunded and therefore underresourced, there is a movement of independent media, here in Scotland and beyond. It’s worth resisting the tendency, which can tip into ‘fake news’ to label all media as bad, corrupt and useless. Making these distinctions is useful, I think.
Secondly, there is a need for solidarity within journalistic circles. Just look at the appalling treatment of women by Trump and the fact that virtually nobody from the White House press lobby lifts a finger in support. How can they? They are, what we used to call in Scotland guilty of ‘Succulent Lamb journalism’. If they revolt against the powerful they will be shut-out and denied ‘access’.
Montage of 19 clips of Trump insulting, berating, demeaning and attacking female reporters over the past few months. pic.twitter.com/ivdQJqjZqq
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) November 19, 2025
This can only really be countered by creating alternative networks of knowledge-sharing beyond the ‘Lobby’ and beyond the networks of power that entrap and distort media. It’s worth remembering that Mandelson was brought down despite the British media, not because of them.
Yes, I agree, and I predict a similar astonished reaction when Starmer, Trump and the media in general is forced to acknowledge and confront Israel’s extermination of the Palestinians.
Your fake news, your horrible, you make stories up, I’m going to speak to Fox News,….
The uk has acted honourably through out the Gaza Crisis, we have nothing to be ashamed of. Beth Rigby Sky News, your question,…
One thing for sure, Trump and Starmer will not be made to confront their role and duplicity in the genocidal actions of Israel in Palestine!
Peter Mandelson was appointed by Keir Starmer when he knew that Mandelson was still in an active friendship with Epstein after he had been convicted for underage sex and sex trafficking.
This decision was wrong on any moral level and should have been wrong on any political level. The fact that Douglas Alexander (son of the manse) and many others in Labour Party described the appointment as high risk, high reward speaks volumes to their moral emptiness and political priorities. In addition Mandelson had twice had to resign for questionable behaviour and should never have been allowed near government again. There was a lot more evidence of Mandelson’s links to Epstein than Starmer claims to know and he either knew or didn’t investigate at time of appointment.
This will quite rightly in all probability lead to the downfall of Keir Starmer and New Labour project sooner rather than later. What we will probably never find out was what pressure was brought to bear on Starmer to sack a woman, who by all accounts was doing a fine job, and appoint Starmer. We know Epstein had close relationships with people in current USA administration and had a long term close relationship with Israel. It would be little surprise if pressure was brought to bear from USA & Israel or if Tony Blair was involved in process. I hope some intrepid journalists will try and unearth the truth on this.
Douglas Alexander, he’s a trougher looking for a peerage!
His moral compass is driven by the smell of ermine!
Once he gets that he’ll never look back at Scotland!
In some respects, I was reminded of Thucydides’ description of Spartan ambassador to Persia, Pausanias, an apparent serial traitor who loved the high life and tyranny, and whose luck eventually ran out:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pausanias_the_Regent
You can tell how diseased a polity must be if it can only be healthy that its most prominent citizens of the ruling class should ideally be beaten to death in the public square, or here walled up in a temple to starve to death. Neither popular nor oligarchic factions in any of the Greek city states typically seem to put their city before party, but still quite happy to hold forth about their equivalents of the ‘national interest’ whilst selling out to one or other set of foreigners, according to the historian.
Mandelsohn: zionist. Kunesberg: zionist. Starmer: zionist (& married to a zionist), McSweeney (Zionist), Epstein (zionist) etc etc. Of course this is all a coincidence nothing more. The fact that Mandelsohn was in regular contact with McSweeney (& stayed @ his house in Scotland apparently) is neither here nor there. Starmer’s support for the genocide committeds by Israel (until that became untenable) – all a coincidence, after all Israel was just defending itself against trrists & absolutely had to murder XX,000 children (pick your own figure) cos after all gazan kids are trrists arn’t they?.
The UK state: an oblast of the Israeli state & also a US poodle
a more thorough vetting procedure to ensure confirmed weirdos are never able to enter public life is fit wid be required here, ye’re welcome.
The media response this week has been very telling eg;
1)Lewis Goodall on NewsAgent admitting that he and many other media members reported Mandelson being appointed as US Ambassador as a clever appointment and that they never really considered the Epstein angle. Indeed Mandelson’s previous dodgy modus operandi was seen as a positive asset by many in the media.
2)Jonathan Freedland in Guardian saying that Starmer’s strongest defence was that other politicians and media also overlooked Mandelson’s ongoing connections with Epstein and praised the appointment. This is a ludicrous story to spin which is more about journalists defending their poor judgment on this issue.
3)Andres Marr on LBC bemoaning how a good man like Starmer was probably no more than naive in his judgement in appointing Mandelson. He then added that Mandelson revelations had handed next election on a plate to Reform. No critique of Farage and Aaron Banks connections in Epstein Files or the bigger picture of how big financiar’s are corrupting politics and society. Just a lazy moan if it can’t be Labour it will probably be Reform then. If people like Marr did their job properly they would expose the big financial donors and corruption propping up Reform and correctly state that it is the party’s that don’t rely on big money donations and links to USA and Israel (see below) that should benefit from the fallout of Epstein revelations.
4)Gordon Brown in the Guardian bemoaning that Starmer was a good man let down by the evil Mandelson. Brown was doing a lot of projecting here as many of his ‘crimes’ were committed after Brown had reappointed him in full knowledge of how corrupt Brown was to save his own political skin. The usual how we need to restructure politics diatribe from Brown ignoring the fact he was in power for 13 years and far from restructuring politics he enabled the current corruption.
Lastly throughout the last week there has been much talk, rightfully, about Epstein’s contacts to Russia but little if any mention of his close links to Israel, IDF and potentially Mossad in any mainstream media.
@John, more obviously, Peter Mandelson’s long behaviour of serving himself at the expense of a public he appeared to disdain, I would have thought, not only disqualified him from public office, but from any expectation that even his political masters would be served by appointing him. If anyone could have been expected to ‘go native’ in the court of King Donald, it would surely have been Mandelson. I gather Pausanias started dressing in Persian robes once he got there.
But then, this was always kind of an in-joke, wasn’t it?
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-7-principles-of-public-life/the-7-principles-of-public-life–2