Prime Minister Keir Starmer (right) and then British ambassador to the United States Lord Peter Mandelson during a welcome reception at the ambassador’s residence in Washington, DC, February 27, 2025
The PM says Mandelson ‘betrayed our values’ – but ministers and advisers flock to line their pockets with corporate cash, says SOLOMON HUGHES
WES STREETING says Peter Mandelson “fundamentally betrayed our values.” But Mandelson helped write the values of New Labour, which Streeting and Starmer and their whole team are following.
Peter Mandelson denies wrongdoing, but the emails between him and Jeffrey Epstein look like sleazy corruption. It’s no surprise Streeting and Starmer want to put distance between him and them.
But Mandelson’s career follows the “New Labour” method he helped design: taking the side of the rich and big corporations, especially around low tax, deregulation and privatisation.
Taking favours from the rich while in office. Taking lucrative jobs working from the corporations they favoured in government when they leave office.
Squashing the Labour left who might try and stop the party being used as a launchpad for these post-ministerial corporate careers.
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This became a basic “New Labour” pattern: when ministers stood down, many joined the private corporations they helped while in power, with ex-ministers taking jobs with privatised water companies, private security firms like G4S, arms firms and so on.
These post-ministerial careers often pay much more than actually being a minister, so Labour MPs have an incentive to push pro-business policies, even if they are wildly unpopular: Labour might haemorrhage enough working-class support to lose elections, but the ministers end up earning more in the long term.
Starmer’s government brought Mandelson back and bought into all his “New Labour” values. Even though the government is still quite new, we can already see signs that Starmer’s team will also leave government for corporate jobs, just like Mandelson.
Labour rehired one of the key Labour ministers who did this back in the day. Wes Streeting employs Alan Milburn as an adviser.
Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership is intensely relaxed about assaulting those least able to defend themselves – the very poorest and most vulnerable.Keir Starmer explains that he feels no shame or guilt benefitting personally from gifts from the rich and powerful while insisting on policies of severe austerity causing suffering and death.Keir Starmer commits to play the caretaker role for Capitalism through the “hard times”.
Keir Starmer picked Peter Mandelson as Britain’s ambassador in Washington, DC. (Photo: Carl Court / Alamy)
Britain’s ambassador to the US asked the convicted paedophile to help vet an Israeli consultant in London.
Lord Peter Mandelson asked Jeffrey Epstein to assist with a background check on an Israeli political consultant, Declassified can reveal.
The Labour party grandee and lobbyist – who is now Britain’s ambassador to the US – has always denied having “any kind of professional or business relationship with Epstein in any form”.
But leaked messages show Mandelson contacted him from his work email address in 2013, more than five years after Epstein had pleaded guilty to solicitation of prostitution with a minor.
Mandelson signed off the email in his capacity as chairman of Global Counsel, the multi-million pound lobbying firm that he co-founded.
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It is not clear whether he got a response, but records show that Epstein forwarded the message to Barak’s personal email address.
The correspondence is contained in a huge leak of Barak’s emails, published by a file-sharing website, Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoS).
U.S. ambassador to the UK Warren Stephens. Credit: Arkansas Inc / YouTube
Warren Stephens made the donation alongside big tech firms and oil giants.
Donald Trump’s ambassador to the UK donated $4 million to the new U.S. president’s inauguration on the same day he was nominated for the diplomatic position, DeSmog can report.
Billionaire Warren Stephens gave $4 million (just under £3 million today) to the Trump Vance Inaugural Committee on 2 December, according to the official record of donations. The committee is appointed by the president-elect to arrange the inauguration ceremony, when a U.S. president is formally sworn into office.
“It’s not so surprising that a transactional president hands out favours to people who give him money, but that doesn’t make it any less outrageous,” said Agustina Oliveri, head of campaigns and communications at the Good Law Project.
There is no direct evidence that Warren secured the position due to this donation. However, U.S. presidents have a long history of handing out diplomatic roles to major donors, while the Trump administration has bestowed his patrons with a number of senior positions. Of the 37 people who gave $1 million or more to the inauguration committee, six have either been given a role in the administration or have been nominated for a role.
Tom Brake, a former Liberal Democrat MP and the director of the transparency campaign group Unlock Democracy, urged the UK government not to follow Trump’s lead.
“Whatever approach the U.S. administration adopts towards the appointment of its ambassadors, the UK government should make it clear that when it comes to appointing UK ambassadors or high commissioners, donating substantial sums of money directly or indirectly to the party of government will block an appointment not facilitate it,” he said. “There must never be a question mark over whether UK appointments are made on merit, or driven by a donor’s deep pockets.”
As DeSmog revealed on 5 December, Warren Stephens holds significant oil and gas interests. Prior to his appointment as Trump’s UK ambassador, he ran Stephens Inc. – one of the largest privately-owned investment banks in the United States. Stephens has since stood down as CEO, but remains its chairman.
The firm’s portfolio includes a number of companies that make their money from oil and gas exploration and production — including one, Stephens Natural Resources, which “has a rich history of drilling and producing both oil and natural gas”, according to its website.
The UK’s ambassador to the U.S. Peter Mandelson also co-founded a public affairs agency with major fossil fuel clients.
Trump’s inauguration committee – which raised almost $240 million – received donations from fossil fuel giants Chevron ($2 million), ExxonMobil ($1 million), the U.S. branches of BP and Shell ($500,000 each), and Valero ($250,000).
It also accepted donations from major tech platforms including Amazon and Meta, whose founders Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg received a front row seat to the event.
Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and others at Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration. Credit: WSJ / YouTube
The inauguration committee received a further $1 million from the Heritage Foundation, a hard-right U.S. research and lobby group which drafted the “autocratic” Project 2025 blueprint for Trump’s second term.
Trump denied knowledge of Project 2025 during the election campaign but has subsequently appointed Russell Vought, one of its advisory board members and co-authors, as director of the Office for Management and Budget (OMB), a key department within the president’s office that helps to oversee and co-ordinate policy.
Project 2025 urged Trump to “dismantle the administrative state”, slash restrictions on fossil fuel extraction, scrap state investment in renewable energy, and gut the Environmental Protection Agency.
Since his inauguration on 20 January, Trump has announced a series of policies that have mirrored these demands.
The new president, who received more than $75 million from oil and gas interests for his re-election campaign, has pledged to once again withdraw the U.S. from the flagship 2015 Paris Agreement, which set an international target for limiting global warming. He has also declared a “national energy emergency” to allow the U.S. to “drill, baby, drill” for new fossil fuels.
“When we look at the dumpster fire of U.S. government policy – from trashing the planet to attacking basic human rights – there’s no point in asking ‘What are they up to?’. The question we need to focus on is ‘Who paid for that?,’” said Oliveri.
The U.S. embassy in London referred DeSmog’s enquiry to the U.S. State Department. The Heritage Foundation was approached for comment.
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Prime Minister Keir Starmer (right) and then British ambassador to the United States Lord Peter Mandelson during a welcome reception at the ambassador’s residence in Washington, DC, February 27, 2025
