Peter Mandelson: How the Prince of Darkness became his excellency

“I am a fighter.. not a quitter,” Peter Mandelson roared at the Hartlepool election count in 2001.

The then Labour MP had just been returned to parliament five months after resigning from Tony Blair’s government, accused of helping an Indian billionaire secure a British passport.

An official inquiry later cleared him of involvement but it was the second time he had been forced to quit.

Mandelson had previously resigned as trade secretary after it emerged that he had borrowed a substantial sum from a fellow cabinet minister to buy a house.

Peter Mandelson and headline news have long gone together.

Spool forward 25 years and Lord Mandelson (as he now is) will soon be taking up residence in the opulent and recently refurbished British embassy in Washington DC, where he will be introduced at state occasions as “his excellency”, as is the custom.

It’s a long way from Hartlepool, in the post-industrial North-East of England, and another political rebound for a Labour politician who always seems to be fighting for the next break.

He recently campaigned hard for the post of Oxford University Chancellor but last month the former Conservative leader Lord Hague beat him to it.

Washington ambassador will be a considerable consolation.

In the mid-1980s, with Labour in the doldrums, Mandelson became the party’s campaign director and began the internal fight of yanking the party back from the left under Neil Kinnock.

By 1992 he had been elected as an MP and then played a secretive role (with the codename “Bobby”) in helping Tony Blair secure the Labour leadership.

His reputation as a Svengali-like operator was already well established.

Fixing, schmoozing and scheming behind the scenes, the spin doctor who seemed to revel in his nickname the “Prince of Darkness”.

At the heart of New Labour, he was revered by admirers and viewed as villain by many on the left.

In government he was a trade secretary in Tony Blair’s first administration and business secretary under Gordon Brown.

Between those roles he had been elevated to the House of Lords and spent four years as the European Union’s Trade Commissioner.

This is the political experience Number 10 judges will be valuable as the world braces for a second Trump presidency and the threat of global tariffs on imports to the United States.

One of the most pro-European members of the New Labour government, Lord Mandelson will also help craft a British foreign policy that seeks closer ties to the EU while keeping President Trump on side.

With China, Ukraine and the future of NATO all areas of potential policy friction it will not be a quiet posting.

As the UK’s man on the ground in Washington DC, Lord Mandelson will have ready access to the Trump team.

He will be expected to charm and cajole the incoming administration at a potentially very delicate time for US/UK relations.

Lord Mandelson is unabashed about his network of connections and Downing Street sees that as a plus.

In the years since stepping back from frontline politics he has made a lot of money through the advisory firm he co-founded, Global Counsel.

But his connections and friendships with the world’s super rich have come under scrutiny too.

In 2008 Lord Mandelson’s contacts with the Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska put him back on the front pages.

In 2023, his former friendship with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein hit the headlines.

A spokesman for the Labour peer said: “Lord Mandelson very much regrets ever having been introduced to Epstein.

“This connection has been a matter of public record for some time. He never had any kind of professional or business relationship with Epstein in any form.”

Lord Mandelson is not a baggage-free choice for a big diplomatic job.

A number of Blair-era figures have returned to the centre of power since Labour’s general election win. Not least Mr Blair’s former chief of staff Jonathan Powell who is now the UK’s national security adviser.

In Lord Mandelson, Sir Keir Starmer has picked a political figure over a diplomat or a career civil servant and Donald Trump will find himself dealing with a man at the heart of Labour’s governing family.

Lord Mandelson will be a bridge between a president and prime minister who seem temperamentally and politically miles apart.

The outgoing UK ambassador Karen Pierce is known as the “Trump whisperer” within Washington for her close contacts with the incoming president’s team.

Having whispered around the corridors of Westminster for decades, Lord Mandelson will soon be deploying his political cunning in the court of Donald Trump.