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).
Sir Trevor Chinn avoids our questions about his political donations, 9 July 2025 (Photo: Alex Morris / Declassified UK)
We asked Sir Trevor Chinn why he’s donated so much money to Labour, after he held an undisclosed meeting with Britain’s foreign secretary.
David Lammy held an off the record meeting with Sir Trevor Chinn, an influential businessman and one of Britain’s leading pro-Israel lobbyists, Declassified can reveal.
The meeting took place on 11 February 2025 but was not recorded in official transparency data published by the Foreign Office.
Lammy’s sole public appointment on that day was a meeting with the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator to discuss “humanitarian crises around the globe” including the situation in Gaza.
The Foreign Office only released details about Lammy’s meeting with Chinn in response to a Freedom of Information request issued by Declassified.
It said this was a “political meeting” and no minutes from the discussion were taken.
The Foreign Office also disclosed that Middle East minister Hamish Falconer met with Chinn on 18 March 2025 in another rendezvous that was not recorded in transparency data.
Lammy, Falconer and Chinn did not respond to questions about whether the meetings focussed on Israel.
Chinn said in 2013: “I’ve spent my entire life working for Israel”. Since the 1980s, he has funded Labour Friends of Israel and Conservative Friends of Israel.
He has played a leading role in Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM), previously described by the Guardian as “Britain’s most active pro-Israel lobbying organisation”.
Doorstepping Chinn
Declassified recently revealed that Chinn – now 90 – met with a top British diplomat to discuss arms exports to Israel despite the government initially claiming the purpose of the meeting was “to discuss geopolitics”.
Chinn did not respond to Declassified’s request for comment on that story. So when we saw him disembarking a taxi outside the Chatham House think-tank in London last month, we quickly asked him for an interview.
Chinn, gripping a copy of the Financial Times, declined our request.
“You’re a very generous benefactor to the Labour Party,” we said as he was ushered inside. “What do you think about the situation in Gaza at the moment? Why do you donate so much money to the Labour Party?”
He ignored our questions, which related to his £50,000 donation towards Keir Starmer’s Labour leadership campaign in 2020.
Chinn’s donation was not disclosed until after the election had taken place.
He has also donated to key members of Starmer’s cabinet including chancellor Rachel Reeves, deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, health secretary Wes Streeting, education secretary Bridget Phillipson, culture secretary Lisa Nandy, and Lammy.
Chinn entered the building on the heels of Israeli opposition politician Yair Golan, who was in the capital for meetings with politicians, including Falconer, and local Zionist organisations.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities,mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.Vote Labour for Genocide.
A US Beechcraft surveillance aircraft circling Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza less than 24 hours before Israel’s deadly aircraft (Source: ADBS Exchange)
A US military contractor hired by Britain to conduct surveillance over Gaza operated above Nuseirat refugee camp the night before an Israeli bombing killed over 30 Palestinians in December 2024.
On the evening of 12 December 2024, Israel bombed the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza without warning. A post office sheltering displaced families was hit; nearby houses were shredded.
More than 30 Palestinians were killed and over 50 wounded. Entire families died, their names posted online within minutes.
Declassified can now reveal that a spy plane owned by a US contractor to whom the RAF is outsourcing its spy flights circled over Nuseirat refugee camp the night before the bombing.
Publicly available flight-tracking data show that in the hours before the blast, and again afterwards, two surveillance aircraft operating from RAF Akrotiri, Britain’s military base on Cyprus, circled close to or over Gaza.
One of these was a RAF Shadow R1 (registration ZZ419) surveillance plane that flew towards Gaza in mid-afternoon before vanishing from public tracking near the territory.
But the other belonged to Straight Flight Nevada Commercial Leasing LLC, a subsidiary of America’s Sierra Nevada Corporation. This was a Beechcraft Super King Air 350 with the registration N60125 and call sign CROOK11.
The presence of this US aircraft alongside RAF spy planes raises uncomfortable questions about whether British intelligence, directly or indirectly, assisted Israel’s targeting of the camp.
Further, the presence of the US contractor over Gaza as early as December 2024 appears to contradict the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) claim that the company was only hired to take over the missions in recent weeks due to strain on RAF’s Shadow R1 fleet.
The MoD insists the flights are “unarmed” and “solely related to hostage rescue”, and denies aiding Israel’s prosecution of the war. But there is no known mechanism to ensure that data shared with the Israeli authorities is not repurposed for attacks in serious violations of international humanitarian law.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Labour Party Shadow Foreign Secretary repeatedly heckled at a speech to the Fabian Society over his and the Labour Party’s support for and complicity in Israel’s genocide of Gaza.Vote Labour for Genocide.
A destroyed ambulance at Nasser Hospital in Gaza. (Photo: Rizek Abdeljawad / Alamy)
‘Common’ to find ‘deep unease’ among British troops over Israel’s conduct in Gaza, military insider tells Declassified
An internal British army media report has acknowledged that Israel is “bombing hospitals and ambulances”, claiming its troops are breaching the Geneva Convention in ways not done by Germany in World War Two.
The comments are contained in an interview between a senior army doctor and a presenter from the UK military’s own communications department, who draw parallels with Israeli conduct in Gaza and Russian atrocities in Ukraine.
Their comments indicate that within Britain’s armed forces, personnel are speaking more frankly about Israeli war crimes than ministers.
A member of the UK military, who asked to remain anonymous, told Declassified: “This video casually contradicts the government’s public position – that Israel is not systematically committing war crimes, so we can continue to arm and train their forces – because everyone in its intended audience knows that to be untrue.
“The comments in the video reflect common sentiments I have heard expressed within the armed forces, and for many personnel that recognition is a source of deep unease.”
Military co-operation between London and Tel Aviv has not been suspended. An Israeli colonel graduated from a UK military academy just last month, while the head of Israel’s air force was able to visit a Royal Air Force (RAF) base in Oxfordshire.
Arms exports for the F-35, Israel’s most advanced fighter jet, have been allowed to continue via third countries. Hundreds of RAF surveillance flights have flown over Gaza since 2023.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities,mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.Vote Labour for Genocide.
Palestine Action ‘supporters’ wait to be arrested under the Terrorism Act. (Photo: James Manning / Alamy)
[Declassified] Exclusive: Documents seen by Declassified reveal serious concerns within the UK government and MI5 about proscribing Palestine Action.
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Declassified has now seen documents which detail why, how, and when the decision to proscribe Palestine Action was made. They form part of the material relied upon in the group’s High Court challenge to the ban.
‘Novel and unprecedented’
The documents detail how the government’s Proscription Review Group (PRG) conceded in March 2025 that a ban on Palestine Action would be “novel and unprecedented”.
This was because “there was no known precedent of an organisation being proscribed… mainly due to its use or threat of action involving serious damage to property”.
The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC), which is based within MI5, also concluded that “the majority of direct action by Palestine Action would not be classified as terrorism… but does often involve criminality”.
Cooper was nonetheless advised in March by PRG and JTAC that the threshold to ban the group had been met based on three out of a total of 385 incidents, involving “serious property damage” to arms factories.
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The documents also indicate how national security concerns were not a central factor in the Home Office’s decision to proscribe. Indeed, they barely feature in the government’s open evidence.
Ammori’s lawyers argued in court that “no national security justification for the proscription” was articulated by the Home Office, such that Cooper “did not take into account any weighty national security consideration requiring immediate proscription”.
This appears to run contrary to Cooper’s statement to parliament on 23 June, in which she declared: “The UK’s defence enterprise is vital to the nation’s national security and this Government will not tolerate those who put that security at risk”.
