U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Thursday fired the country’s ambassador to the United States, Peter Mandelson, over his links to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
In a statement in the House of Commons on Thursday, Foreign Office minister Stephen Doughty said the decision came in the wake of the publication this week of emails Mandelson sent to Epstein in the 2000s, in which he gave his support to the disgraced financier even when he was facing jail for sex offenses.
Doughty said the emails showed that the “depth and extent” of Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein was “materially different” from what was known when he was appointed ambassador to Washington last year in the wake of the Labour Party’s election victory.
Mandelson, who took up his post in February this year after what the government described as an “extensive” vetting process, has voiced his deep regret over his previous links with Epstein and said he knew nothing about his criminal activities.
“In light of the additional information in the emails written by Peter Mandelson, the prime minister has asked the foreign secretary to withdraw him as ambassador to the United States,” Doughty said.
In particular, he pointed to Mandelson’s suggestion that Epstein’s first conviction in 2008 was “wrongful and should be challenged.”
On Wednesday, The Sun newspaper published emails that it said showed Mandelson telling Epstein to “fight for early release” shortly before he was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
“I think the world of you,” Mandelson told him before he began his sentence for soliciting prostitution from a minor.
The decision to fire Mandelson comes just a day after Starmer said he had “confidence” in him. It’s the latest blow to the prime minister ahead of a state visit by U.S. President Donald Trump to the U.K. Next week, which is likely to be met with protests and some controversy. Last week Starmer also saw his deputy, Angela Rayner, quit over a tax error on a home purchase.
The government said James Roscoe, the U.K. Deputy head of mission in Washington, will serve as interim ambassador and oversee Trump’s state visit. Roscoe is a career diplomat and former communications chief to the late Queen Elizabeth II.
Starmer’s judgment is being increasingly questioned, particularly over his appointment of Mandelson, who is no stranger to controversy, having twice resigned from former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government in 1998 and 2001.
In the wake of his second resignation from Blair’s government, Mandelson became a European Commissioner when Britain was still in the European Union, before returning to front line British politics in 2008 to serve under Blair’s successor, Gordon Brown.
Mandelson’s trade expertise was considered a major asset in trying to persuade the Trump administration not to slap heavy tariffs on British goods, and seemed to pay off when the countries struck a trade deal in May, though some details of the agreement have yet to be finalized.
He is also a skilled – critics say ruthless – political operator whose mastery of political intrigue brought him the nickname “Prince of Darkness.”
It’s rare for a politician, rather than a career civil servant, to be given a key U.K. Ambassadorial post. The center-left former lawmaker was not an obvious emissary to the Trump administration. Mandelson once called Trump a “danger to the world” — words he later said were “ill-judged and wrong.”
The focus on Mandelson over his links to Epstein accentuated this week after the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released a 50th birthday album compiled in 2003 for Epstein, who at the time was a wealthy and well-connected financier. In that album, Mandelson called Epstein “my best pal” in a handwritten note.
Other alleged contributors to the album that was compiled by British convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell were Trump himself, former President Bill Clinton and attorney Alan Dershowitz in a “friends” section, and included other letters with sexually provocative language.
Epstein took his own life in prison in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges, more than a decade after his conviction.
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Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.