His name is Peter Mandelson: He is a Labour Party “peer,” and a longtime intimate of Tony Blair (and Jeffrey Epstein), and he is widely referred to in London as the “Prince of Darkness,” or sometimes the “Dark Lord,” after J.K. Rowling’s evil Voldemort. According to numerous media reports, such as in Politico and Financial Times, the Trump administration in late January finally agreed to accept him as the next British ambassador to Washington—although it’s not yet official.
A Feb. 6 piece by George Parker in Financial Times admitted: “Mandelson, a free-trading, liberal, former EU Commissioner with strong China links, last week withdrew his ‘ill-judged and wrong’ assertion in 2019 that Trump was a ‘danger to the world’ and ‘little short of a white nationalist and racist.’ Meanwhile, Chris LaCivita, a Trump campaign adviser, described the new ambassador as ‘an absolute moron’ who should stay at home.”
All of that notwithstanding, Prime Minister Keir Starmer named “Mandy” for the post, and he has reportedly been accepted. Financial Times took the occasion to file a lengthy article with a laudatory profile of Mandy’s capabilities, while detailing his main assignments in Washington:
1) Ensure that the U.S.-U.K. special relationship remains intact, including on intelligence-sharing and military matters. And
2) Coach Trump’s team on how to handle a confrontation with China, a country about which Mandelson claims to be an expert.
In the FT’s exclusive Feb. 5 interview with Mandelson, he explained that the Trump team may “see me as a leftwing progressive, somebody who might even be anti-business or somebody who might be following the sort of liberalism they’ve just defeated in America. What they will discover is I’m not an uber-liberal, I’m not a wokey-cokey sort of person, and I’m pro-market and pro-business.”
Parker explained: “His mission is to get in with the U.S. President and stay there. Starmer wants Mandelson to persuade Trump to maintain the American security guarantee in Europe, build commercial ties and avert the threat of tariffs on British exports.” What he has going for him is that “he is a mix of intrigue and insights, mischief and mastery of the political dark arts…. His skills as a master of political spin earned him the nickname ‘The Prince of Darkness.’”
Mandelson first entered the British government when Tony Blair became prime minister in 1997. After various sex and financial scandals drove him out of government, he made a comeback in 2008, during the financial crisis, when Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown turned to him. “He was given a seat in the House of Lords and became de facto deputy prime minister,” FT recounts. Mandelson is extremely well-connected in the financial world and among what he happily calls “the filthy rich.” Over recent years he set up a highly successful consulting firm, Global Counsel, whose clients have included Shell and the bank Santander U.K.
Among the better-known scandals swirling around Mandy is his association with Jeffrey Epstein. “An internal JPMorgan report from 2019, filed to a New York court in 2023, said that ‘Jeffrey Epstein appears to maintain a particularly close relationship with Prince Andrew the Duke of York and Lord Peter Mandelson, a senior member of the British government.’” For more on Mandelson, see EIR’s coverage.
Will the British be relying solely on their Prince of Darkness? By no means. As FT article noted, “Starmer is expected to travel to Washington soon, and thoughts in London are turning to the possibility of a second Trump state visit, along with the royal pomp that the president enjoys so much. ‘The royals are our greatest asset with Trump,’ says one British diplomat.”
