Tom McTague, ‘friend’ to Peter Mandelson and Morgan McSweeney?
Photo: Steven May/Alamy

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.

Anthem of the North

The poet and author spent the first 12 years of his life in Ashton-in-Makerfield where he was placed with a foster family shortly after his birth in 1967. Here, reproduced with his permission, is a poem he wrote in 2018 to launch the Great Exhibition of the North in Newcastle

Lemn Sissay

Peter Oborne's Diary – Dignified Silence

Years ago, I had the privilege of interviewing Peter Carington over lunch at his home in Buckinghamshire. He was 93 years old and the last surviving member of Winston Churchill’s post-war Government.

Peter Oborne

Free from fear or favour

Tracking and cookies. WHY?

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

Anthem of the North

Peter Oborne's Diary – Dignified Silence