A CABINET minister has said Peter Mandelson has “outstanding, singular talents” as he refused to say if it was a mistake to appoint him as UK ambassador to the US.
Mandelson was “withdrawn” from the key diplomatic role on Thursday after further details emerged of his relationship with the late convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
On Sunday, Business Secretary Peter Kyle refused to give any details on whether or not he believed Mandelson had misled the Prime Minister’s office and defended Keir Starmer’s judgement.
The Mandelson saga erupted after Democrats in Congress released copies of the so-called “birthday book” on Monday after the documents were subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee last month.
Leaked emails first reported by The Sun also showed that Mandelson told Epstein in 2008 that “your friends stay with you and love you” while the billionaire was being investigated for paedophilia offences.
Foreign Office minister Stephen Doughty told the Commons on Thursday that “in light of additional information” in the leaked emails, Mandelson would be “withdrawn” as ambassador.
Kyle told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg: “At the point at which Peter Mandelson was appointed, and the run up to his appointment, global politics had been turned upside down.
“The relationship between Britain and America was in a perilous state because of the threat of tariffs, what was happening economically, trying to repurpose and rethink the special relationship.
“Britain needed somebody with outstanding, singular talents, experience which was very hard to come by. And yes, a lot was known about Peter Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein. He had apologised for it. And these two things were weighed up.”
He said that “on balance” the decision was taken to appoint him. “And then I have to say that in that period, we have navigated the most difficult period in the US-UK relationship since the Second World War, and we have delivered for people in Britain time after time after time.”
After repeatedly being asked if he thought the appointment was a mistake, he said “new information” showed Mandelson had advised Epstein post-conviction.
“We will go back and look at the appointment, you know, we’ll go back and judge on what we know now, but we didn’t know that at that point in time.”
It comes as a former UK ambassador to the US has said the vetting process takes “weeks and weeks” and includes interviews with sources.
Asked if you could keep things hidden from the process, Lord Kim Darroch told Sky News’ Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips: “I think they certainly don’t just ask you to fill in a form, Trevor, saying, you know, what you want them to know and maybe concealing the things you didn’t want them to know.
“They ask people about you and they look into your background through sources you may not have nominated as people to act as your referees.
“So they do a thorough job… they take weeks and weeks, if not longer, over individuals – the process takes a fair amount of time, so you would expect them to know quite a lot and discover things that maybe weren’t advertised.”
He added: “On the other hand, you know, emails from closed or old email addresses that have been closed down – I’m not enough of a technical expert to know how you get to that kind of thing, so whether that would have been available to them I have no idea.”
They also interview the person being vetted, he said.
And, the siblings of Jeffrey Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre said that Mandelson should “absolutely not” have been appointed UK ambassador to the US in the first place.
Asked if Mandelson should have been given the role, Giuffre’s brother Sky Roberts said: “Absolutely not. He should not have been given the position in the first place.”
Giuffre’s sister-in-law, Amanda Roberts, added: “Why does it take us to have to pull out the skeletons for people to be held accountable?
“Our governments have allowed these people to hold their status and their title without shame, and so part of me is like, we should have done something sooner. He should have never been given that title.”
We previously told how the SNP launched a bid to have Mandelson stripped of his peerage.
