Any association with this prolific, internationally famous paedophile and sex groomer should have been a red black. Virginia, it's very clear she wasn't talking about one man. It was that whole world. She used to talk about the 1%, That 1%, you think they can do anything? His incredibly long letter? It fit the language of the rest of the birthday notices to Epstein perfectly. They all had that kind of like grim, icky, euphemistic chatter
about sort of sexuality. Anything that's hanging over this whole conversation, it's about that. Donald Trump is in that book as well. And does it actually put more heat on him that Mandelson has gone over his relationship with Epstein? Hello and welcome to the forecast. For the third time in his political career, Peter Mandelson has fallen from high office in a scandal linked to rich and powerful men. This time it was his relationship with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein that
proved his undoing. Sacked from his role as UK ambassador to the US after leaked emails showed him offering support for Epstein even after a sex offence conviction, Downing St. said the Prime Minister found the depth and extent of the relationship reprehensible. But questions are now being asked about Sir Keir Starmer's judgement in appointing him in the 1st place, given Lord Mandelson has attracted, some would say courted controversy
throughout his career. He was widely considered to be doing a good job in Washington, though with a good rapport with President Trump. Is that relationship now damaged? To discuss this, I'm joined by the film maker Richard Sanders, who produced the Dispatches documentary that first revealed the friendship between the two men, the Labour peer Aisha Hazarika, and the author and political journalist Ian Dunt, who has written extensively on Lord Mandelson. Well, Ayesha first.
He had to go, didn't he? Absolutely. I mean, I think many people felt that when the extent of his close personal friendship with Jeffrey Epstein came to to light, you know, people knew that they were friends. But I think the the level of kind of affection, I mean, they felt like they were love letters being being written and you know, to use colloquial phrase, I mean, they kind of gave
everybody the ick. I mean, it really was, some of it was quite kind of stomach training, stomach training anyway. But to have these letters to somebody who, you know, was really kind of the modern day equivalent in America of what Jimmy Savile was in in the United Kingdom. So absolutely, with that question, he definitely had to go. Ian Dunn it it's been a shameful episode and and shaming to Britain as well. In the eyes of the US, maybe.
Yeah, I mean, it's quite hard. There's not a lot more of our national reputation for us to uphold at the moment, and we're really struggling to keep what we do have. This isn't really helping. We had a really good ambassador to the US, Karen Pierce, you know, seasoned diplomat, not the kind of person who ends up on the kind of islands that we're
talking about here. You know, had a long career stretching back to the 80s, starting in Japan, had managed to, you know, build the bases in that kind of subtle old fashioned British Foreign Office sort of way across the spectrum in the US. And then you get this decision, which felt kind of weird at the time of being, well, we need a political operator. And you think, wait, you don't really need you're absolutely, you've got a really good about now. Why would you be making any of
these changes? And at that point, we knew everything that we know now. I mean, fine, so a few emails have come to light, but it wasn't like the basic facts. We said today the material facts, which the material facts have not changed at all. Well, well, let me bring in Richard on that point, Richard Sanders, because, you know, we made this film together back in 2019.
The government pops up today and says, well, there's a material change now in what we knew about Mandelson's, Mandelson's relationship with Epstein. What did we find out in 2019 that we broadcast to the world? It was very frustrating really, because back in 2019 we had an interviewee, he was an anonymous
interviewee. He was a close friend of of Epstein's, you know, a man, interesting man, a very, very wealthy man, had had his own yacht, had various connections with the intelligence services himself. And he told us this extraordinary story of visiting Epstein while he was supposedly in prison, you know, sort of very, very luxurious prison. And while he's there, he gets this phone call. Because he was allowed out on day release. To do this.
Calls in his office. Yes, I mean, you know, and he was only in prison for a year and he gets this extraordinary phone call from this gentleman called PT and he's sort of listening to it. He's trying to work out what it is. And and the phone call itself is interesting. This person wants Epstein to arrange a meeting. Once the phone was hung up, it became quite clear that that PT was Peter Mandelson and it and it was clear that they were very close friends.
The tone of it was they were very close friends and and also in Peter Mandelson didn't deny this at the time. What is it as I have no recollection that meeting, which is a rather rather different thing from denying something. We got a lot of legal push back at the time. A lot of legal push back, but it evaporated after we'd actually gone to. But he also said an interesting thing. He said why would I need Jeffrey Epstein to make my bookings for me in New York?
Which is precisely the point. Why indeed? And we'll talk, we'll come to, you know, why Mandelson was sort of seduced by rich and powerful men in a second. But Aisha, all of this given what we knew back in 2019 that we put out on air and what has dribbled out since, it raises serious questions, doesn't it, about Sir Keir Starmer's judgement in appointing Peter Mandelson to this plum job?
Well, it's now coming to light that concerns were raised the Labour peer Morris Glassman, who's very close to Morgan McSweeney, who is Keir Starmer's chief of staff. You know, it's said that he submitted a memo, you know, close to the time saying, look, I'm, I think this is a difficult
appointment. But I think the calculation was from Keir Starmer's team that the prospect of negotiating with Donald Trump was going to be so difficult, particularly when a lot of people in the cabinet had sort of slagged Donald Trump off over the years. You needed somebody. But including Peter Mandelson though.
Absolutely. But you needed somebody who could kind of sort of be a Trump whisperer who could move in those sort of circles, which Peter is very good at doing because he does like wealth and he likes wealthy men and and powerful men as, as, as we've seen. But I think what what should have been a big red flag is the fact that anybody with a close friendship with Jeffrey Epstein,
massive, massive red flag. Don't forget the Prince Andrew story and saga in our country, the Emily Maitlis interview, the fact that he kept his friendship going with Jeffrey Epstein even after he had been convicted, and the fact that, you know, Prince Andrew had to be sort of discarded from, from, from the royal family. I mean, any association with this prolific, internationally famous paedophile and sex groomer should have been a a red flag.
But I think the calculation was that the government and I, I kind of understand from a, you know, from a business point of view, from a trade point of view, you know, they were just thinking about, look, we don't want to get massive tariffs from Trump. We want to have a good deal with Trump. But I think you also have to remember your your values in this. Ian Dunn, you should never have been appointed in the first place. No, I mean obviously not.
And then having been appointed, they needed to be much quicker off the mark of realising what the significance of what's happened this week was. In fact, they failed him. So yesterday you get like Prime Minister in PMQ speaking very confidently about something that you're looking at and thinking like, is that line going to hold? Like it doesn't feel like it's going to hold. Sending out minister this morning and the immigration minister to hold that line and you're thinking like this line
is not going to hold. So that's someone there who's not going to forget the fact that they've been sent out to do that, who will be a bit more reticent about going out to hold
the government line next time. Once you build a lot of people around you who feel that way, who question your judgement, who don't know if they'll be hung out to dry and made to look a fool by the fact that you're going to U-turn on something that you currently seem terribly confident about, that's when things start to become quite difficult for you in Parliament. That's what's scuppered plenty of Conservative prime ministers over the last, you know, decade and a bit.
So no, I would worry quite a lot about the decision making that lay behind both the original appointment and the things that have happened this week. And Peter Mandelson has already been turfed out of Cabinet jobs in the past. I knew you were there when some of that.
Yeah. I mean, look, he, he's very much seen as the sort of Icarus, you know, kind of character in, in, in the Labour Party. He was, you know, he had to resign because of a loan he took from a man called Geoffrey Robinson. He then had to resign over an issue about passports for 2 Indian businessmen, the Hinduja brothers, although he was subsequently cleared of that. So he is somebody that is kind of a high risk, high voltage
person. But I think the other thing that I just like to sort of see in all of this, Kathy, is that, look, this New Labour government has also got a really important mission and that's to have violence against women and girls. And it's really proud to be a party, even though we haven't had a female leader, we're very proud of of delivering for women, particularly in terms of violence against women. And I think a lot of women in the Labour Party were really horrified about this.
We've just had this big grooming scandal in this country, the Pakistani grooming scandal. I met some victims recently in Parliament and it was so painful listening to them. And the long tail of this kind of abuse from women who were groomed from a young age by paedophiles and raped for sex. People think these are crimes that happened like, you know, 20 years ago. Get over it, move on. No, for these women, the long tail of these crimes, I mean, Virginia Jeffrey took her own life.
And I think in a mix, in the midst of all this, who's up, who's down, What kind of characters, Peter? There are victims who are everyday reliving this horror and trauma. Well, and Richard, it was very clear in that just excruciating birthday book that we're we're that we saw 238 pages running joke about Epstein's appetite for young women. I mean, horrifying. But there'll be other people now sweating because they know that they've looked at what's happened to Peter Mandelson.
They know that they might be next. Tell us about that. Well, there's a lot of people, you see when we did the film in 2019, all this business about the the Epstein list. And will the Epstein List be be produced? I don't think it's, it's quite as mysterious as that. We, there had been a lot of legal proceedings over the years. And we looked into those legal proceedings really carefully. And there was a massive documentation online.
And when you really picked it apart, you got, you know, a lot of names, all very rich and very powerful, a lot of them very well known. Some world leaders in there. Now, in the year after our film, I got to know Virginia quite well. I used to speak to Virginia on the phone all, all the time and she was very keen to go go after them. She she wanted to go after them. But obviously it's the legal implications. You're going to get sued by these people.
But is that going to start happening now, do you think? I mean, because there's talk the Epstein victims talking about sort of putting together their own client list and getting out there naming and shaming. Yeah, well, I mean, it would, it would all depend on the lawyers. I mean, you know, we, we, we discussed this making follow up films and, and, and the problem was the, the risk of being sued by extremely wealthy people. Are you sure you know a client list?
Is that? Is that where this now goes? Well, I think where they should go now is instead of just talking about the careers of very, you know, rich men, I think this needs to move to the victims and justice for the victims. There are many, many men implicated in this. This is a a, you know, a very elite network of, of men. And I think when Peter Mandelson did that interview with his son and he said, you know, my heart goes out to to those victims. I hope and I sincerely hope he
did mean that. And I think one thing he could do, because nobody is coming forward to help those victims and, you know, give any evidence or talk to them about what they know. And that's what, you know, will move this case forward. So I would strong I would like to see him reach out to the victims groups now and sit down with them and tell people what he saw and what he knew to help these victims. I mean, there's no implication that he was involved in the abuse in any way whatsoever.
I should just make that clear. But what do you think of that suggestion that Peter Mandelson should sort of help expose and name and shame some of these rich and very powerful men? Yeah, that'll be helpful. I don't think it's like, but I mean, you know, it would be encouraging if we were to see something like that. I mean, I think we, we've understood the, the pattern with him. It's strange, you know, because we just had like a summer of Oasis and everything's about the late 90s.
Now I just feel like I'm back in the late 90s. It's exactly the same story that we were dealing with like 1998. It's the first time we had a resignation. It's the same resignation is always the same. It's always the same circumstance. It's like, should you really have been friends with this tremendously wealthy man when he was EU commissioner, by the way, in between these two lives? Exactly the same stories coming out. Should you really have been
seeing this Russian oligarch? Should you really have been hanging out with this person from Microsoft when they're under investigation? You know, over and over It's the same story with him. When someone exhibits the kind of behaviour you see like that just happening over and over with regularity unchanged over about 30 decades, you sort of think I very much doubt this person's going to change anytime soon. And I'm afraid I wouldn't have
much hope that he will. What is it about wealthy men that appeals to Peter Mandelson? I mean, for certain people, that is a very attractive kind of social milieu to be in, and I guess he's one of them. What's interesting about his incredibly long letter was that it fit the language of the rest of the birthday notices Epstein perfectly. They all had that kind of like grim, icky, euphemistic chatter
about sort of sexuality. And he's all the same with Manson and stuff about the Yum, Yum this and that. It was all, it was icky, right? But it was the exact language that all the other letters were using. He clearly fit in that society and that kind of social context. Aisha. Well, I mean, I think Peter has always been very seduced by, by wealth and he's always, obviously always been attracted to it. And, you know, you know, I, I know Peter reasonably well.
I've worked with him over the, the years. And I think for people who are very, very close to him, the frustration is he is a, he is a great political mind. And he's also his own worst enemy in the sense that, you know, he has this ability to self sabotage his his his career. And he is obviously, you know, like a moth to the flame, attracted to extreme wealth and these very particular types of very wealthy, very powerful men. You don't really get that many powerful, wealthy women.
So it is powerful, wealthy men. Ian, how's the state visit going to go now? That's going to be really difficult. I mean, mostly because, of course, the thing that's hanging over this whole conversation is fact that Donald Trump is in that book as well. And despite the fact that, you know, the far right in the US have been pretending for over a decade now that they're tremendously worked up by elite network.
So they've completely imagined in their head, the second that they get presented with a real elite network that implicates their hero, they suddenly don't have anything to say. Nevertheless, he is in that book and in any rational world that would be the the first thing and the only thing that we would be talking about over the last week as as a globe, as a world, that's what we would be discussing.
And does it actually put more heat on him that Mandelson has gone over his relationship with Epstein? It's going to make it a tremendously difficult thing for Keir Starmer to navigate, which is the conversation about Peter Manson on the one hand, and what he needs to do to keep Donald Trump sweet during a state visit, on the other. And there's a very small area in between those two circles that you can operate within in the way that isn't going to upset attitudes on one side or the other.
And I think Starmer's going to really struggle with that. That is a problem of his own making. And if they'd been a little bit more cognizant and strategic about the way that these things could work out, that problem would not necessarily have had to have taken place. Ian is right. Look, Peter Mandelson not being here orchestrating and conducting this state visit will make it more difficult. And of course, there will be more scrutiny and more heat on Donald Trump now because of of,
of the Epstein connection. And of course, all of this also makes it quite difficult for the royal, uncomfortable for the royal family because of the Prince Andrew link as well. So this is all going to be very, very tense. But, you know, also we've got a new foreign secretary as well who will be kind of navigating this. I mean, it helps that David Lammy does have a good relationship with JD Vance. I'm sure David Lammy as Deputy Prime Minister will, will now probably move into quite an
important position. But I don't think we should kid ourselves. This state visit is going to be quite, quite tricky. Just on the point about about Trump, it's very important to bear in mind. Who denies any wrongdoings? And as Virginia was quite clear that she'd never been abused by Trump, Epstein world was fundamentally a democratic world, as was Harvey Weinsteins. Okay, Bloomberg have 18,000 of Epstein emails or I think Trump's name pops up three times.
There's a story that it's very odd it hasn't been picked up more. Yesterday the Times reported that there's a memo Peter Mandelson sent to Tony Blair in 2002 saying you really ought to meet this man. Now. It wasn't meet him to discuss this or something specific. It was just in general. He's a useful person to know. I'm amazed no one seems to have asked Tony Blair, did you meet? Him, don't worry.
We've been bidding for him. But but I mean, how damaging is this whole thing to Trump, though? I mean, I take your point that this was a sort of a bigger problem for the Democrats. But you know, Trump happens to be the one in power. So how problematic is the whole thing? For him, I think it is problematic. Trump and he fell out at a certain point before Epstein went to prison, they fell out and that that relationship stopped.
So I'm not sure how much more there is to come out about Trump than has already come out. I mean, I used to talk to Virginia. That's been bad enough, though. It's been bad enough. I used to talk to Virginia quite a lot about Trump. She he was sleazy. You'd see him around. He was a sleazy, unpleasant presence. But other men loomed much larger
in her memory. Just coming back to the state visit and sort of picking up the pieces from this mess, Who will be, I mean, we know we've got an acting ambassador, but who's going to be the permanent replacement or who should be? Karen Pierce. Well, I mean, look, I do agree with what Ian said. I mean, Karen Pearce was a really well respected figure. I think having a, a female ambassador is a, is a, is a really good thing. She was somebody who, you know, the, the White House felt that
they could work with. You know, she was really respected by the, by the, the department. And I think as well, I think civil servants and the diplomatic service were always felt slightly uncomfortable about this top job being a political appointment rather than being an appointment that went to sort of a top diplomat who had really, you know, cut their teeth around the the world. And so it should revert.
To that in your. View Well, I just think after after everything that's happened, I think that would make a lot of sense. I mean, let's see what number 10 decide to do. But I think bringing Karen back would be no bad thing. Ian is it going to be sort of a political now? And hopefully we would go back to the default setting and go for that kind of person. And there is a reason that we have these people in those kind of jobs and and they don't typically get themselves into
trouble like this. It would also be quite good, I think for for the Labour government. Just have a think about the kind of language and principles that had established at the beginning when it came into government. We will be cleaner than clean. We are going to show that you can kill populism by virtue. Just showing like we are going to get rid of sleeves. We're going to get rid of this
kind of behaviour. Now we've we've seen things that I think are very much, I thought the rain I think was very, very minor and extremely forgivable and a bit silly on tax. It's not. It's nowhere near the kind. Of other people see it differently. But we do see it differently. But I mean, I, I would be surprised if you went to most people with what do you think the moral severity of these two stories is last week or this
week? Most people would obviously think this is a much graver kind of situation that we're talking about this week. But on that basis, it's a good chance for them to say, hang on a minute, let's make sure we're living up to that language and those principles that we expressed when we first came into government. I just think so, so kind of fascinating from a kind of a
feminist point of view. It just shows you about this kind of network of these incredibly powerful this these elite men and the sort of impunity with which they thought they could behave. And the fact that they earned a lot of money or they ran these big businesses where they held these great positions in office. But has that. Changed now I. I, I mean, I, I hope so, I don't
know. And I think so many people will, will look at this and just think, you know, this sort of inherently sort of patriarchal sort of behaviour, which is, and this sort of behaviour that impunity men who clearly felt that they could just get away with it because these were the masters of the universe. These were kind of these global emperors and they were above the law and they were above morality
and they were above decency. I mean, and, and, and the tentacles of Jeffrey Epstein go, you know, as you say, it's not just one political party. It was Democrats, publicans, you know, the Labour. I'm sure there's political parties all over the world. Business, business. The royal family, you know, there is a Nexus of this absolutely like disgusting, venal, sickening behaviour which these men for decades have just been able to get away with.
So that that's Virginia used to talk about that all the time. She was very clear. She wasn't talking about one man. She wasn't even talking about the, the, the sort of circle around him. It was that whole world he moved in. She used to talk about the 1%, that 1% who think they can do anything. Well, let's talk about the politics more broadly. Aisha, You're well plugged into the entire parliamentary party, of course. How disgruntled are people? Well, I mean, there's no way to
sort of sugar the pill. I mean, there has been a very, very difficult couple of weeks for the, for the. Labour Party, I mean, it's been disastrous, hasn't. It of course it's been very, very difficult, been coming back, doing a reset and then at the end of that week, you know, losing Angela Rayner who you know, I think she had to go given what she did. But it was a great loss to the party because she was a really good communicator. She was held in a great amount of affection.
She was a great campaigner. And now a week on losing, you know, one of the kind of prime jobs in, in, in the government, you know, in terms of those sort of trinkets given out, it's, it's terrible. And I think the members and the Parliamentary Labour Party are are definitely sort of jittery, but they're not just sort of jittery in an internal way. They want this get Labour government to succeed, right?
They really want this Labour government to succeed because the alternative is absolutely terrifying. The prospect of staring down the barrel at Prime Minister Nigel Farage is absolutely terrifying. For Labour's incompetence is is bringing that day further forward. By the minute things have not been going well and the Labour Party does and the the kind of leadership absolutely needs to,
to get a grip. But in terms of where the mood of the party is, it's, it's very worried and it wants the kind of leadership and it wants to pull together to sort of do good for the country and tell that story. But at the moment it just feels like there's so many sort of scandals happening.
And they want to, they want this Labour government to, as, as Ian said, do what they promised to do, which is come in, change the country, fix this country for the, for the better, you know, and, and, and get on with building a sort of positive Britain. And they want to move on from,
from from these distractions. Much anyone at the moment who is like even from the center right to the sort of socialist left is just desperate for this government to succeed because you're seeing the stuff in the wings. And the stuff in the wings is not the conservatism that we're used to. And we we're having somewhat like a mainstream politician stand up and talk about basically like mass deportations. Like it's what like some kind of normal policy.
It's a far right policy. That's what it is. It's far right talk. It's far right rhetoric and we know that there is this poison. And yet when you look for some kind of leadership, what you see from the top of the Labour Party is just this sort of sense of like we, we are unwilling to speak about our values. Like we're just not going to say we're unwilling to speak with any kind of emotion at all.
The only criticism we will make of even a policy, as extreme as that is we think that you've constructed incompetently. It's like that's not the problem with the policy. The policy policy is that it's a moral obscenity. So there is just no sense of a progressive voice seemingly like in this country at all. It's really hard to find it anywhere to the point that you end up with, you know, like the leader of the Green Party and the FT, like, you know, that's
where you're getting your. It's a ridiculous state of affairs. So Are you sure if the leadership doesn't get it's act together, is Keir Starmer potentially out of a job before the next election? I, I don't, I don't think so because I do think that even though people are disgruntled, remember I think you have to just look back through history. It is not often that Labour wins a general election. Keir Starmer is only the 7th Labour Prime Minister in the history of British politics,
right. And so I think even though people are, are definitely not happy at the moment and grumbling, I think people do also remember that we don't often have a Labour government. It was hard fought for and to be fair to Keir Starmer, he is the person that got the party over the line for many, many years. Labour is very, very good at losing elections. He did something that that no Labour leader's done for a long time and I've worked for a number of different Labour leaders.
He got Labour over the line, but what he's got to do is he's got to sort of get his team together and look, there are some really important things that are happening. Things are starting to turn a corner with the NHS. There's record investment going into infrastructure and planning. You know, the defence spending is, is, is, is doing lots of good work for kind of jobs up and down the country. Massive shipbuilding coming back to to to to Scotland with this Norway deal.
So and the economy is stalling and immigration is still. Going home, but that but it's wrong to say that there's like it's not balance say that there's nothing good or nothing positive happening. But Labour apps. It has to get a grip. And one thing you said, you said emotionally, and that's so important. It's no point just pointing to charts and graphs going look
what's happening. It's about having an emotional connection and having an emotional dialogue because people out there right now are so anxious. They're anxious about the economy, they're anxious about immigration, they're anxious about crime, anti social behaviour, what they're seeing. And Labour has got to be more on the front foot, a better kind of speaking, a language that connects with people. Ian Keir Tom has never been capable of speaking that language.
Do you see him safe in his job until the next election? Or do you think if things keep on, you know Farage is still ahead in the polls for the next year? 2 Whatever then it's curtains for Kier. The you can hear the whispers. I mean, even the way the people have been talking about Andy Burnham, you know, in this slightly sci-fi sort of way, it's quite hard to see the blocking of how you get him into part of it.
But you know, even that the sort of, you know, these attempts are just finding some kind of alternative. You can hear the whispers starting to build now. Still, the good money would be on Kier Starmer leading into the next election. Absolutely, Aisha. Finally, you're in the Lords for Labour. You're looking forward to sharing those benches with Peter Mandelson. Well, let's see if he, you know, comes back and wants to. I mean, he might want to stay in
America for, for a while. That will be a decision for him. Would he be welcoming the Lords though? You'll have to ask some of his other colleagues. What I'm asking you, do you welcome him back to the Lords? I mean, is it, is it appropriate that he's, he's been sacked from one of the plum jobs, is it right that he turns it up back in the Lords? The Labour, that isn't it. I mean, the way the Lords operate says there's a lot of people that are under, you know, a lot of scrutiny.
And I think it's important to say he's not broken the law and you've said that he hasn't done. We've established, you know, we're not saying that he himself, but it was his. But he might have broken the Lord's code of conduct, which would. Require him to be suspended. That will be for the, for the Lords of authorities to, to, to have a look at. All I can say is he hasn't done, you know, things like other people have done, like dodgy PPE and things like that and, you know, sort of done.
He hasn't, I think it's really, really clear he's not broken any rules or, you know, done anything like like that. But you know, as I say for Peter, if he's serious about having sympathy for those victims, I would really like to see him to reach out to, you know, the the lawyers of the victims, some of the victims and, and, and talk to them because his knowledge, and we're not saying he is, he's done anything wrong, but his knowledge could really help them. Richard, would the victims
welcome that? Oh yes, certainly. I mean anyone who can, who can speak up and provide evidence. The other one person who knows absolutely everything is Gilane Maxwell as well, of course. Richard Sanders, Ian Dunt and Aisha Hazarika, thank you all very much for joining us. That is it for this episode of THE FORECAST. Until next time, goodbye.