Peter Mandelson Named Ambassador to the United States

Labour grandee Lord Peter Mandelson in an undated file photo. Yui Mok/PA

Labour grandee and leading Blairite Lord Peter Mandelson was named on Friday the next UK ambassador to the United States in a key political appointment as President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House.

The staunchly pro-EU Mandelson, who served in the cabinets of Sir Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, has become the UK’s next top diplomat in Washington, taking over from current Ambassador Dame Karen Pierce.

“It is a great honour to serve the country in this way,” Mandelson said in a statement.

He added: “We face challenges in Britain but also big opportunities and it will be a privilege to work with the government to land those opportunities, both for our economy and our nation’s security, and to advance our historic alliance with the United States.”

His appointment comes as Trump is set to be inaugurated for the second time, with questions over what his “America First” promise to introduce tariffs will mean for the so-called “special relationship” between the historical allies.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said that he was “delighted” to appoint Mandelson, and he will bring “unrivalled experience to the role.”

In a statement, the prime minister said that “the United States is one of our most important allies and as we move into a new chapter in our friendship, Peter will bring unrivalled experience to the role and take our partnership from strength to strength.”

Criticism of Trump

In a 2018 article for the London Evening Standard, Mandelson hit out at Trump during his first term in office, writing: “He is a bully and a mercantilist who thinks the U.S. will gain in trade only when others are losing. His idea of a progressive trade policy is one that forces everyone else to give the US more favourable treatment rather than a trading system from which everyone gains.”

Starmer said on Thursday that the UK would “have to make sure that we avoid tariffs” as he faced questions in Parliament on his approach to the incoming U.S. president.

Former British ambassador to the United States, Lord Kim Darroch, who was in post during Trump’s first term in office, told BBC’s “Newsnight” on Thursday that he thought it was a “good appointment.”

He said, “I’ve been saying for a long time ever since the election outcome that I thought Peter Mandelson was the right man for the job and I’m glad that it’s been announced.”

Darroch resigned as ambassador in 2019 after messages he wrote criticising the Trump administration were leaked to the press.

In an interview with Sky News, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander called Mandelson “an individual of very significant international standing” whose extensive trade policy experience, including as EU trade commissioner, would be “really important” for working with Trump.

“We need someone as the next ambassador to the U.S. who is going to be able to promote our economic and security interests with one of our closest allies, and so I think he is a really good fit for the job,” Alexander said.

‘A New Relationship’

Mandelson, the former MP for Hartlepool, said last month that he was “more in favour of a new relationship rather than a special one” with the United States. He was a key player in the campaign for the UK to remain in the EU, and advocated for a second referendum following the result in favour of Brexit.

Mandelson was nicknamed the “Prince of Darkness” for his influence behind the scenes as an architect of New Labour. From 1985 to 1990, he worked as Labour’s director of communications and was one of the first to whom the term “spin doctor” was applied.

Mandelson was a powerful force in helping to restore the Labour party to power in the 1990s when he was a close confident of Blair’s, having backed him for leadership in his battle with Brown following the death of John Smith.

A controversial figure, Mandelson’s pro-business stance alienated many of the party’s traditional working class voters. A former member of the Communist Party who told the BBC he sold the Morning Star outside Kilburn Tube station in his youth, he famously said in a 1998 interview that he was “ridiculously relaxed” about people becoming “filthy rich” as long as they paid their taxes.

He served as trade secretary and Northern Ireland secretary, but stood down as an MP in 2004 to become a European Commissioner.

Former British Prime Minister Sir Tony Blair leaves the BBC headquarters after appearing on the "Andrew Marr Show," in London, on June 6, 2021. Henry Nicholls/Reuters

Mandelson returned to government in 2008 when Brown awarded him a peerage and appointed him business secretary. He is the only person to have held the position of first secretary of state as a peer.

He grew up in the wealthy Hampstead Garden Suburb area of north London and was born into an influential political family as the grandson of 1940s Labour Deputy Prime Minister Herbert Morrison.

A graduate of Oxford University, he was a member of the Young Communist League before going on to work for Labour leader Neil Kinnock and having a stint working behind the scenes in TV.

Scandals

Mandelson has been involved in numerous scandals over the years, and was twice forced out of government owing to financial irregularities. In 1998, he was forced out for failing to disclose a home loan from a senior minister. Shortly after his return, he was forced to resign owing to a passport scandal involving billionaire businessmen, the Hinduja brothers.

Most recently, he hit the headlines over his links to Jeffrey Epstein, the financier found dead in a prison cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on multiple charges of sex trafficking minors, procured with the help of his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.

Mandelson’s association with Epstein was first reported in 2002, when New York Magazine described his presence at a dinner party at the billionaire financier’s townhouse. In 2022, a photo emerged of Mandelson and Maxwell celebrating a birthday at Epstein’s Paris apartment in 2007.

An internal report by JP Morgan, filed to a New York court in 2023, suggests that in June 2009, when Mandelson was business secretary and Brown’s de facto deputy prime minister, he stayed at Epstein’s town house when the billionaire financier was in prison for soliciting prostitution from a minor.

The report also says, “Jeffrey Epstein appears to maintain a particularly close relationship with Prince Andrew ... and Lord Peter Mandelson, a senior member of the British government.”

Last year, a statement issued on his behalf reported in the media 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.”

He was recently shortlisted to be chancellor of Oxford University but lost out to former Conservative leader Lord William Hague. Currently, Mandelson is president of international think tank Policy Network, honorary president of the Great Britain–China Centre, and chairman of strategic advisory firm Global Counsel.

Mandelson has long advocated for closer ties between the UK and China and spent seven years as president of the Great Britain–China Centre, a non-departmental Foreign Office body dedicated to relations between the two nations.

In 2018, Mandelson wrote that it is “absurd to imagine putting a country of such weight in the naughty corner” in regards to relations between the United States and China.

In 2021, Mandelson was also the only Labour peer to vote against an amendment to the Conservative government’s post-Brexit trade bill designed to force international action to stop China’s human rights abuses against the Uyghur minority in the far western Xinjiang region.

The appointment of ambassadors is confirmed by the king, following the recommendation of the prime minister who generally seeks the advice of the foreign secretary.