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Mister Speakers, the relationship between the US and the UK is one of our foremost relationships, and I have confidence in the ambassador in the role that he is doing.
That was Prime Minister's questions on Wednesday, with Kirs Starmer defending Peter Mandelssohn, the UK's ambassador to the US. By Thursday, we heard this from the Foreign Office Minister Stephen Doherty.
The emails show mister Speaker that the depth and extent of Lord Mallison's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein is materially different from that known at the time of his appointment.
Well, those emails published by Bloomberg are deeply revealing of Mandelsohn's relationship with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Today, we're bringing you the inside story of that scoop and asking what it means for Kirs Starmer and the labor government. Hello, you're listening to a special episode of the Bloomberg Daybreak you at podcast. I'm Caroline and.
I'm Stephen Carroll. Now, this story starts with some eighteen thousand emails from Jeffrey Epstein's personal Yahoo account, which were seen by Bloomberg, including many exchanges with Peter Mandelsson, who was at the time the EU's Trade Commissioner and was until yesterday, the UK's ambassador to the United States. The messages show a close personal relationship with the disgraced financier and exchanges at key moments in the months before he
was imprisoned in mid two thousand and eight. They provoked a chain of events which led to Mandlson's removal from his position at a key moment just days from Donald Trump's visit to the UK.
Well, if you recall, Stephen Peter Mandleson was appointed as Britain's ambassador to Washington in February. His ties to Epstein were known then, but Lord Mandleson had previously denied that they were extensive. However, the emails uncovered by Bloomberg reveal something different, and that the day before Jeffrey Epstein reported to a Florida jail this is in June two thousand and eight, to begin serving time for soliciting sex from
a minor. He received an outraged message from Peter Mandelsson which included the following quotes, I think the world of view and I feel hopeless and furious about what has happened. I can still barely understand it. It just could not happen in Britain. And lastly, your friends stay with you
and love you. Those words and others contained in the emails mean that Kirs Starman and his advisors now face growing questions and anger about why Lord Mandelsson was chosen for this most important of diplomatic roles.
Well, this story was a political bombshell in Westminster, so that we wanted to talk more about how it came about. For that were joined by our finance reporter Harry Wilson, who reported on those emails, and by our political correspondent Ellen Melligan as well. Harry, I wanted to start with you and I suppose how this story got started, and I suppose what you thought when you first saw the contents of these emails.
I still remember looking at that email. I mean, it was among the first that I found, and it was really just as soon as you read it, it was just I kind of thought, if you've been a Hollywood scriptwriter imagining like what someone might say inadvisedly to a convicted pedophile just before they go to jail, I don't think you'd have come up with words quite as dramatic
as what Lord Manderson had sent. And it was just I think the overwhelming sense of the closeness between the two of them, that you know, this was more than just an association as I think Lord Manderson has described it in recent days and weeks. This was a seemed like a deeply personal friendship the two of them had.
What were the sentences and was that stood out for you? I mean, this is a huge volume of emails that you went through. You also sent a long request for comment to Peter Mandelson regarding this cash of emails and what the contents of it was what stood out to you also as you kind of waded through them all.
There's a whole bunch of us who've been working on this, and I think, to be honest, amongst all of us, just as we went through the emails, we got this kind of sense of I guess how you might describe it as some kind of quasied lobbying campaign that Lord Anderson had been on for Epstein in the months before
he went to jail. It was it's kind of like you sort of imagine, you know, if you had a friend in peril and he's there sort of almost every week, checking in with Epstein, making sure he's okay, trying to kind of find ways of putting potentially in touch with people who might be able to help him. It's more than just I guess, a sense of being a moral support. It's a sense that there's an active level of support there, and I think that's what really kind of, I guess
surprised us. And then when you see what he actually sends just the day before Epstein actually goes to it's really the culmination of a whole months long, I guess even years long thing in which Mandelsson has been all the way through this kind of support for Epstein to an extraordinary degree.
Of course, that expression, I think the world of view in that email, as you say, the day before Jeffrey Epstein went to jail, certainly stands out. Talk to us about the exchanges that you and the team had with Peter Mandleson before this story was published.
So the first he learned of our story would have been on Monday afternoon. We sent her an email to him at three thirty six in the afternoon on Monday. It was a very long email. It was nearly two thousand words long. It contained all the emails that we were planning to report in full, with the dates of
when they were sent. We explained to him which email account the emails have been sent from and two and we then listed about twenty questions to him, just setting out all the sort of different things that we felt the emails raised as issues with him and asking him
for comment. And at that point we had planned, you know it, there was a lot of stuff there, and in fairness to him, we felt that he should have a decent amount of times respond so we gave him til essentially the end of the week to come back to us. But then I guess events kind of moved
pretty fast. You had the US Congressional Committee come out later that day with the birthday book, and in there there was this ten page I guess, how would you describe it, like a glowing tribute that Mandelson gave to Epstein in two thousand and three for this extraordinary birthday book, And that really sort of then from there the sort of pressure started growing on Manderson, and I think at that point we were starting to think to ourselves, you know,
we're being overtaken by events here, and particularly then on Tuesday, there was this growing chorus I think around Lord Mandelsson in his role as ambassador was it viable. So we decided then to bring forward actually our deadline for his response to the next day, and then Wednesday morning was suddenly out of the blue came this interview that Lord Mandelsson gave to The Sun in which he started talking about, obviously the birthday book, saying how much he deeply regretted
his association with Epstein. But then, and obviously to us, this really stood out when he started saying hinting at further revelations to come, which to our minds certainly suggested
that he was obviously aware of what we'd sent. And it was that point we decided to directly go to him on WhatsApp because at this point we still have not received any recognition from him that he'd received anything that we'd sent to him, and so we messaged him and then it I guess that sort of things that sort of started spiraling really from there, and we ended up obviously publishing later that day.
At this point, I'd like to bring in our political correspondent, Ellen Milligan to think about this revelation. I mean, these were letters and support this relationship between Mandelssohn and Epstein around the time of his conviction for soliciting sex from a minor. This is the issue for Kirs Starmer, now, isn't it?
Ellen?
How damaging do you think this is for the Prime Minister around his judgment. That's the question that politicians and others in the country are seeming to put to the Prime Minister.
Now.
Yeah, it's deeply damaging. And the Prime Minister has suffered other resignations during his one or so years in office, including his Deputy Prime Minister over a tax issue recently, but the sacking of Peter Mandelson is uniquely humiliating because it was entirely predictable. I mean, this is a politician who had to resign twice from Tony Blair's government for
his murky relationships with wealthy businessmen. He's a politician whose friendship with Epstein, including since his two thousand and eight conviction, was public knowledge. It was raised in the vetting process we report today when he was made ambassador and the Prime Minister was warned about this. He was asked about it by The Financial Times on the week of his appointment,
to which Manderson told the FT to f off. All these questions have been swirling around Peter Anderson for years, and what Harry's reporting did was kind of shine new light on the depths of the relationship, but much of
it was known. And though yes there are questions being raised now about the Prime Minister's judgment about his Chief of Stealth, Morgan McSweeney's judgment, who we've reported was a big advocate for Manderson getting this role, it raises questions about the vetting process and also questions about the government's own reasoning for sacking Manderson. I mean, in their statement they say that the emails that Harry publish showing new depth and extent to the relationship, in particular the Peter
Anderson suggestion that Epstein's first conviction was wrong. And I was in the briefing with the Prime Minister's spokesperson yesterday and we were putting to him, you know that sounds like you were comfortable with them having a friendship as long as he thought Epstein was guilty of the crimes. But now because there's evidence that he thought he was innocent, that's the thing that's moved to the dial. There are lots of questions being raised around the judgment of the Prime Minister.
Now indeed, Ellen will await you're reporting then on what does happen at that state visit. That is our political correspondent, Ellen Milligan, and in our studio, our finance reporter Harry Wilson reporting on those emails revealing that relationship between Peter Mandelson and the late Jeffrey Epstein.
And you can read more of those stories Epstein's inbox on the Bloomberg website, on Bloomberg dot comen the terminal as well, and more on the story behind the story of Mandelsson's Epstein emails. You find both of those stories on the Bloomberg website. This is Bloomberg Daybreak Europe, your morning brief on the stories making news from London to Wall Street and beyond.
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