Mandelson and the New Statesman: How the ‘Soft PR’ Sausage Gets Made

Mic Wright considers the evidence of backroom media wheeler-dealing revealed in a recent tranche of documents relating to the now disgraced Labour lord

Two days after Peter Mandelson was announced as the UK’s Ambassador to Washington in December 2024, Tom McTague, then Political Editor of the UnHerd website, published a column headlined “Peter Mandelson Is a Canny Choice for US Ambassador”.

In it, he wrote: “In Washington, Mandelson will do what he has always done: gossip, perform, and gravitate to the centre of power. In many ways, he is a made diplomat.”

Jeffrey Epstein did not appear in that short and profoundly positive piece.