Keir Starmer’s big gamble on Peter Mandelson

On 20 December a press release from Downing Street confirmed Lord Peter Mandelson’s (pictured) nomination to be the next British Ambassador to the United States, writes Dick Roche.

Traditionally Britain’s ambassador to the United States has been drawn from the UK’s pool of career diplomats.  While not unprecedented the patronage appointment of a political figure to Washington is a departure from the norm. The most recent departure from that norm, the 1977 appointment by Labour Prime Minister, James Callaghan, of his son in law Peter Jay, once described as “the cleverest young man in England" to the post did not end well.

It is not hard to imagine that Lord Mandelson’s nomination could also end in drama.  

Dick Roche, a former Irish Minister for European Affairs takes a long look at the career of Peter Mandelson who Keir Starmer has nominated to be the next British Ambassador to the United States. 

Bright, manipulative and ruthless

Peter Mandelson has been a figure in British politics for almost five decades. Over the years, he has demonstrated a remarkable capacity to stage political comebacks from crises largely of his own making.    

Born into the UK Labour Party Mandelson’s maternal grandfather Herbert Morrison was Minister for Transport in the first Labour government, served as Home Secretary during WWII and as Foreign Secretary in Clement Attlee’s post-war administration.  Like his grandson, Morrison had a ‘spikey’ relationship with political colleagues. Clement Attlee is said to have delayed his resignation as Labour leader to stymie Morrison succeeding him.

Peter Mandelson was elected in 1979 to Lambeth Borough Council. Three years later he quit the Council following disagreements with ‘hard left’ Labour Council members.    

Niall Kinnock appointed Mandelson as Labour’s Director of Communications in 1985.  Mandelson coordinated the party’s 1987 General Election campaign.

While Director of Communications Mandelson effectively ‘rebranded’ the Labour Party, reshaped its famously fractious annual conferences, came up with the red rose symbol, that the party continues to use and put it back on course after a series of disastrous electoral performances.  Mandelson himself was also ‘rebranded’ - as an opinionated, ruthless, self-interested spin doctor.

In a 2010 BBC interview, Niall Kinnock spoke of “having to “take some responsibility for Mr Mandelson – I gave him his first significant job.” Kinnock added “(in) my view of Peter was that he wasn’t as good as he thought he was, and he was certainly not as bad as many people said he was” adding “so much was said about him as, --- the Prince of Spin, and the Prince of Darkness, that (Mandelson) has “inhaled and --- come to believe that caricature of himself."

Elected

In the April 1992 UK General Election the Conservatives won a narrow, 21-seat, overall Commons majority. The win came as a surprise, opinion polls had pointed to a Labour victory. Peter Mandelson took the ‘safe Labour seat’ of Hartlepool in the election. 

Labour’s defeat led to Niall Kinnock’s resignation as party Leader. On 18^th July 1992, he was replaced by John Smith.  By the time of the election, relations between Mandelson and Kinnock had cooled. The leadership change did not improve Mandelson’s position. Smith who distrusted him did not give Mandelson any position.

John Smith’s sudden death in May 1994 and the leadership contest that followed it presented Mandelson with a dilemma. Having developed a close relationship with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown he had to make a choice who to back.  He threw his weight behind Blair and joined Blair’s campaign team operating under the pseudonym “Bobby’ ostensibly to cloak his involvement from trade unions and left-leaning party members who disliked him intensely.  

There was no actual contest between Brown and Blair. Brown stood aside leaving Blair to compete with John Prescott and Margaret Beckett for the Party leadership – a contest he won easily.  In his victory speech, Tony Blair acknowledged the role played by ‘Bobby’ in his campaign.

Gordan Brown saw Mandelson’s support for Blair as a treacherous betrayal. While Blair and Brown forged a positive political accord a decade-long animosity grew between Brown and Mandelson.

Appointments that ended badly 

Following Labour's landslide victory 1997 General Election campaign, Tony Blair appointed him as Minister Without Portfolio and put him in charge of the £1 billion ‘white elephant’ Millenium Dome project. In July 1998 Mandelson was appointed Secretary of State for Trade and Industry a significant appointment but one which lasted for only five months.

On Christmas Eve 1998, Mandelson was forced to resign over an undeclared loan of over £370,000 given in 1996 by a Cabinet colleague Geoffrey Robinson to buy a home in London.  Robinson, a millionaire, serving in the Blair Government as Paymaster General also resigned.  

Mandelson argued that he did not believe accepting a loan from a fellow MP was wrong. He also claimed that Robinson had asked for confidentiality and said that he “respected” that request.  Robinson later described Mandelson as a “divisive and destabilising figure”.

Mandelson’s time in the wilderness did not last long. In October 1999 Blair brought him back into the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland replacing Mo Mowlam.

The appointment was welcomed by Ulster Unionists who disliked Mowlam and who felt that like his grandfather Herbert Morrison, Mandelson might be sympathetic to their viewpoint.

When the appointment was made, the Irish ambassador to the UK wrote of Mandelson being a ‘substantial figure’, “having a fine political brain” and speculated “as a Blairite – (Mandelson) will be a strong supporter of the Good Friday Agreement” and “will work closely with Blair to achieve its implementation”.

Mandelson held his new post for less than fifteen months. He was forced to resign on 24 January 2001 over accusations that he had acted improperly in assisting an Indian businessman, Srichand Hinduja, with whom he had dealings while in charge of the Millenium Dome, with a passport application.

Important progress was made in implementing the Good Friday Agreement during Mandelson’s tenure as Northern Ireland Secretary, however, little of what was achieved was attributable to Mandelson alone. There were serious slips during his tenure, most notably Mandelson’s decision to suspend the Northern Ireland Assembly at a critically sensitive time during arms decommissioning talks, a decision that angered Sinn Fein. Unionists lost faith in Mandelson over his handling of the restructuring of Northern Ireland’s police service.

As Mandelson left Northern Ireland, the Irish ambassador who had been so optimistic when Mandelson took office wrote of him as “courting the media relentlessly, telephoning reporters, correspondents and editors, to charm or cajole". He also  suggested that Mandelson had “assumed the issues in Northern Ireland would be quickly resolved” leaving him with "time to devote to matters which really interested him – advisor to the PM, the consolidation of the New Labour project, the preparations for the (next) election, Britain’s relations with Germany and the Government’s European policy…” The ambassador concluded, “Northern Ireland was more complex and demanding than (Mandelson) may have imagined… and tested his abilities and resilience." The Irish Foreign Minister Brian Cowen characterised relations with Mandelson as ‘fraught’.  Mandelson commented that as he left Northern Ireland his dog ‘Bobby’ was more popular than himself.

Move to the Brussels

Peter Mandelson was re-elected in the June 2001 UK General Election. In the run-up to the election, he and two Ministerial colleagues were cleared of wrongdoing in the Hinduja passport affair.

In a fiery speech at the election count, Mandelson reminded critics who had written him off at the campaign’s outset that they had underestimated him “ because I am a fighter --- a fighter and not a quitter”.

Demonstrating just how true that claim was in 2004 Mandelson managed to persuade Tony Blair that he was the right candidate to replace Niall Kinnock, then the EU Commission Vice President. The idea of nominating Mandelson for the Commission was strongly resisted by senior Members of Blair’s Cabinet. Announcing the decision Blair described Mandelson as having the skills and contacts that made him “the best man for the job”. Mandelson said he hoped his enemies would conclude that “love him or loathe he is a strong guy, and we need a person to bat for a strong Britain in Europe." EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso assigned Mandelson to the EU Trade Commissioner post.

Mandelson’s move to the Commission attracted international attention and lots of ‘spin’.  The US-based Forbes magazine concluded that “Mandelson -- an astute politician whose unusual combination of talents --- will become a highly effective commissioner.” The piece forecast that “Mandelson is unlikely to return to frontline U.K. politics” speculating that “In the event of a highly successful period as trade commissioner, capped by a Doha Round deal, Mandelson could emerge as a potential successor to Barroso.”

That was not quite how things worked out. Mandelson’s stint as EU Commissioner was rocky. From the outset, he engaged in unnecessary and very public clashes. He hit out at EU leaders for what he portrayed as an attempt to “put him on a leash.” Throughout his period in the Commission, he locked horns with Member state leaders, Nicolas Sarkozy in particular, on WTO policy.

Mandelson also engaged in an unwinnable dispute with Europe’s farmers about the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP). The line he espoused on the CAP infuriated Europe’s farmers. In the 2008 Irish Lisbon Treaty Referendum Mandelson’s name became synonymous with all that was wrong in Brussels: “Say NO to  Mandelson’s Europe”  was a potent slogan for those advocating rejection of the Lisbon Treaty. Days before the referendum vote Mandelson had to issue a statement clarifying that he had not accused farm leaders of lying about the WTO talks.

President Sarkozy blamed Mandelson in part for the defeat of the Lisbon Treaty in the Irish referendum. While the decision of Irish voters to reject the Lisbon Treaty by an overwhelming majority in the June 2008 referendum was informed by a wide range of concerns, Mandelson’s arrogant refusal to listen to warnings about the line that he was taking in the WTO talks did not help.

The WTO talks broke down on 29^th July 2008. The main sticking point was disagreement between the US, India and China.  On 3 October 2008, Mandelson formally resigned from the EU Commission a year short of his full term. On the same day, Gordan Brown announced that he intended to invite Mandelson to rejoin the UK Government.  

Back home

Given the decade-long animosity between Brown and Mandelson the Prime Minister’s decision to bring  Mandelson back into government came as a surprise. Asked to explain his decision Brown said “serious people are needed for serious times”. Mandelson put his return down to the challenges the UK faced from the global financial crisis.

Mandelson was given a life peerage and returned to the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and President of the Board of Trade. He was appointed First Secretary of State in June 2009. Mandelson remained in office until the May 2010 election when Labour was voted out of government.

Mandelson’s return to government did not produce any further excitement and helped to bring a degree of peace to the closing period of Gordon Brown’s administration. 

After the fall of the Brown Government  Peter Mandelson founded the highly successful Global Council consultancy with Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, a colleague from the Blair years whose father had acted as Mandelson’s solicitor during the 1998 property loan controversy.  

In 2018 demonstrating his considerable chutzpah, Mandelson made a pitch to become the UK candidate for Director General of the World Trade Organisation arguing that the post needed to be filled by a practised politician, not a diplomat or a technician. The Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May nominated the former Conservative Minister Liam Fox to contest the vacancy.

What could possibly go wrong?

The announcement of Mandelson’s nomination to serve as ambassador to the United States was accompanied by much hype. Lord Mandelson’s intellectual capacity, wide range of contacts, charm and ability to ‘schmooze’ have been flagged.   His, turbulent tenure as EU Trade Commissioner, ‘rocky’ performance in Northern Ireland, resignations, decades-long capacity to create political enemies and his capacity  to score  political ‘own goals’ have received less attention.

Prime Minister Starmer predicted Mandelson’s "unrivalled experience" would take the U.K.-U.S. "partnership from strength to strength"  and described his decision to nominate Lord Mandelson as demonstrating “how importantly we see our relationship with the Trump administration”   a curious choice of words given the drama that played out in 2019 when the then British ambassador to the US Sir Kim Darroch was forced to resign when leaks from confidential despatches appeared in British media. In the despatches the ambassador referred to the Trump administration as “inept”, dysfunctional and marred by “knife fights and referred to the President himself as “insecure”, “inept” and “incompetent”. President Trump labelled that ambassador a “very stupid guy” saying he  “(had) not served the UK well” and “we’re not fans of that man”.   Ambassador Darroch resigned.

While Ambassador Darroch’s views on Trump were not intended for publication Lord Mandelson has not been shy of making his views public.

During Trump’s first Presidency Mandelson suggested that the President would never embody British values and dismissed the idea of attempting to make common cause with him. The BBC records Mandelson describing President Trump as "little short of a white nationalist and racist."

While EU Trade Commissioner Mandelson called Trump’s “America First” policy “isolationist” describing the President as “a bully and a mercantilist who thinks the US will gain in trade only when others are losing”. After returning to UK Politics Lord Mandelson in an interview described President Trump as  "reckless and a danger to the world".]

Unflattering personal references to President Trump are not the only issues that could prove explosive. As EU Commissioner Mandelson argued that Trump’s attitude towards China put global free trade at risk, describing the President’s attempt to put China “in the naughty corner” as “absurd”.

Mandelson’s wide list of personal connections often portrayed as positive by his promotors is another area that could be problematic.

Peter Mandelson’s resignations in 1998  and 2001 arose from personal relationships and poor judgement rather than from actual wrongdoing. In 2008 then Commissioner Mandelson had to deal with headlines about accepting hospitality from Oleg Deripaska, at a time when the Russian oligarch, was asking the EU Commission to ease restrictions on his business. Deripaska has been sanctioned recently by the EU and the US. In 2019 allegations emerged in a report filed in a New York court that while serving in Gordan Brown’s government Mandelson had stayed in Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan home while Epstein himself was in jail again produced embarrassing headlines. An ambassadorial appointment would not survive similar headlines.

While President-elect Trump has not publicly commented on Lord Mandelson’s nomination, a Republican strategist who worked on his 2024 campaign, Chris LaCivita, commented on social media that in appointing Mandelson the UK would “replace a universally respected ambassador with an absolute moron” and recommended that Lord Mandelson “should “stay home.”

Whether Mr LaCivita’s comments were simply personal is not clear.  Media reports over the Christmas period suggest that Trump “gave permission” to Mr LaCivita to post his comments.

If those reports are true there is a possibility that Mandelson might not make it to Washington. The 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations gives the US the option of declining to accept his nomination. Assuming that London reached out to Washington – and to Trump’s transition team - before the announcement of Mandelson’s nomination an outright refusal to accept the nomination seems unlikely. Another possibility is that Lord Mandelson arrives in DC and is cold-shouldered at least for a period or he could arrive, apply his legendry charm, schmooze President Trump and his team and that all ‘works out well’ - time will tell.

On past performance, one thing seems certain Mandelson’s time in DC whether short or long is likely to produce plenty of headlines and unlikely to be boring.

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