'Securing Mandelson’s position in Washington, within that network, was clearly a high priority.'
Jon Trickett is the Labour MP for Normanton and Hemsworth
This week, the Prime Minister explained his decision to sack Sir Olly Robbins, Permanent Secretary of the Foreign Office, due to his decision to grant Peter Mandelson security clearance. His speech to the House of Commons focused on the process behind the appointment of Mandelson. But there is another model for how a Prime Minister should operate.
Having worked in No. 10 as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Gordon Brown, I saw this firsthand during the years of the financial crash. Brown was an activist Prime Minister. Unlike the current Prime Minister, he did not rely on process to deliver the outcomes he wanted. He drove government action and made a major contribution to tackling the global crisis. Although I did not agree with Gordon on everything, he was able to see the big picture and move the state, while also treating no detail as too small to consider.
What, then, have we learned from Sir Olly’s evidence at the Foreign Affairs Select Committee this morning?
The security vetting service initially tended towards refusing the vetting of Mandelson, while the Cabinet Office believed he did not need to be vetted at all. While the vetting process was still ongoing, the government proceeded with the appointment; even the King and the United States were informed of the decision.
The Foreign Office, it appears, moved toward delivering a positive vetting outcome because that is what officials believed the government wanted. At the same time, Sir Olly’s private office was under constant pressure from the Prime Minister’s private office, demanding to know when the process would be completed.
This raises an obvious question: Why was so much pressure placed on securing Mandelson’s appointment, given what was publicly known about him at the time?
The answer is that Mandelson was a close political ally to the Prime Minister and was deeply connected to a vast international network – what might be described as a billionaire class. Much of this nexus of wealth is centred around the orbit of Jeffrey Epstein. It is important to note that none of this would have come to light without the courage and bravery of the women and girls who spoke out.
Securing Mandelson’s position in Washington, within that network, was clearly a high priority.
This leaves a bad taste. The government promised change, but the change it appears to have pursued was to accelerate the integration of the British state into networks of wealth and influence. That is not what people voted for. They voted for change on the cost of living, on the NHS, and on other pressing issues. That change has not been delivered.
In recent months, the scale of youth unemployment has been raised repeatedly. It is difficult to see how time spent ingratiating ourselves with Washington and these networks does anything to help the unemployed or the poor.
There are also serious questions about Mandelson’s business links in Russia and China. Parliament has gone so far as to ban software from China, reflecting the extent to which the government views China as a hostile state. Why, then, did they consider Mandelson’s links to be low risk?
Similarly, while much time has been spent condemning Vladimir Putin, it has apparently been deemed acceptable to appoint as ambassador to the United States someone with connections to figures aligned with him.
Finally, the government and Cabinet must deliver the change they promised. That requires a change of direction and a conscious effort to extricate the state from what can only be described as an unpleasant and decadent network.
Mandelson played a key role in the faction that reshaped the strategic direction of the Labour Party. The reality is that this project sought to transform Labour into something it had never been before. Continuing down this path risks a downward spiral from which it may be difficult to recover.
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