By Christian Edwards, CNN
London (CNN) — Britain’s political class is being shaken by a scandal the scale of which typically comes around only once in a generation, and the man at the heart of it was once seen as the savior of the party that is currently in power.
Peter Mandelson, a former British ambassador to the United States who is credited with helping to create the modern version of the Labour Party that propelled Tony Blair to power in 1997, is now facing a criminal investigation stemming from the US Justice Department’s latest release of material relating to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Mandelson, 72, is accused of passing on market-sensitive information that was of clear financial interest to Epstein in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Gordon Brown, Britain’s prime minister at the time, said Tuesday that he has written to the police with information relevant to its investigation and slammed Mandelson for his “inexcusable and unpatriotic” act.
The scandal may have been less potent if Mandelson — who was twice previously forced to resign from government due to his ties to wealthy individuals — had not been plucked from the private sector by Prime Minister Keir Starmer to serve as Britain’s ambassador to Washington, despite his well-known friendship with Epstein.
Although Starmer fired Mandelson as ambassador after just seven months in Washington during the fallout from an earlier release of Epstein files, the prime minister’s initial decision to appoint him has snowballed into a crisis for his beleaguered Labour government, which could yet result in more political scalps.
Who is Peter Mandelson?
Dubbed, somewhat melodramatically, the “Prince of Darkness” for his Machiavellian approach to power, Mandelson became Labour’s director of communications in the 1980s. He helped turn a party seen as sclerotic and captive to trade unions into the polished, market-friendly project known as “New Labour,” which eventually won a landslide election in 1997 under Tony Blair.
Having helped propel Labour to power, Mandelson was appointed “minister without portfolio,” which allowed him to attend cabinet meetings and gave him broad powers across the government. But little over a year into the role, he was forced to resign in 1998 for failing to declare a loan he obtained from a millionaire colleague to help him buy a house.
Despite leaving in disgrace, he returned to the government the next year as trade secretary, before resigning again in 2001 over claims that he used his position to influence a British passport application from a wealthy donor.
Mandelson then left the government for Brussels, serving as the European Union’s commissioner for trade from 2004 to 2008. He returned a third time to help revive the ailing government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown as it grappled with the fallout from the 2008 financial crisis, this time serving as business secretary.
After Labour lost the 2010 general election, Mandelson spent more than a decade in the private sector. Last year, however, he was tapped by Prime Minister Keir Starmer for the role of British ambassador to the US. The decision was seen at the time as risky: Starmer wanted a political heavyweight to hold his own in the Washington of US President Donald Trump. So he traded Karen Pierce — a career diplomat seen as a safe pair of hands — for the more mercurial Mandelson.
When did the Epstein links emerge?
Starmer’s decision backfired within months. In September, the US J