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Peter Mandelson exchanged WhatsApp messages with a senior cabinet minister criticising Keir Starmer’s lack of “verve” and tendency to buckle under pressure, suggesting the prime minister should behave in a more “Trumpian” fashion.
The former US ambassador said No 10 was “beleaguered and bereft” and that the public were “crying out for leadership”. In another exchange, he described both the advisers and policy coming out of No 10 as “rubbish in, rubbish out”.
In other exchanges included in a significant release of files on Monday, he accused former prime minister Gordon Brown of trying to undermine Starmer to the advantage of the then deputy PM, Angela Rayner – and suggested former health secretary Wes Streeting was “hysterical” over Gaza and having a “mid-life crisis”.
The exchanges – many with the work and pensions secretary, Pat McFadden – show extensive discussions of the party’s strategy, including Mandelson’s view that businesses were losing confidence in the UK economy.
Other revelations in the new files include:
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McFadden complaining how Labour MPs wanted to raise taxes to pay for welfare.
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Starmer’s chief of staff considered setting up an external No 10 unit to circumvent existing staff.
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Mandelson venting his annoyance about Ed Miliband and net zero.
The WhatsApps are part of a vast tranche of data that MPs voted to release in February relating to Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador including texts with ministers and senior officials.
Mandelson was sacked from the role in the autumn after new disclosures about the closeness of his friendship with the late sex offender Jeffery Epstein.
Some of the messages appear to show Mandelson going well beyond his brief as ambassador, instead providing UK political advice. The first criticism in the Mandelson-McFadden exchanges comes after Rachel Reeves’s spring statement last year, when the government was forced into additional proposed welfare cuts because of downgrades in the Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecasts.
“I am very worried about the economy. Confidence is being lost,” Mandelson texted, to which McFadden said there was a “pattern we must get out of”.
The pair also had long exchanges in the aftermath of the May 2025 local elections and the loss of the Runcorn byelection to Reform. Mandelson said that Morgan McSweeney, the prime minister’s then chief of staff, had been “confident” about winning Runcorn.
“The problem is the government doesn’t give a sense of crusading to turn round and change Britain. That’s what I mean by panache, verve,” he wrote, adding that the government should be “behaving in a more Trumpian risk-taking and daredevil way”.
“At the moment ministers seem to be looking more to the Whitehall machine and the party base than to the public who are crying out for leadership.”
In another exchange two days later, Mandelson said Brown was trying to undermine Starmer – but suggested he knew key figures on the soft left such as Rayner and Ed Miliband were not serious challengers to Starmer.
“Gordon [Brown] has it in for Keir (and Rachel [Reeves]) big time. He doesn’t seriously believe that Angela is an alternative but she is an instrument of destabilisation. I doubt he thinks Ed is fit for purpose but he is doing to Keir what he has always done to successive Scottish leaders.” He also said Labour MPs were in a “mutinous state”.
McFadden, who was then Cabinet Office minister, said of MPs: “Every meeting I have is: ‘Who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others?’ They’re asking the wrong questions.”
Mandelson suggested that the Treasury was “looking at a huge bank levy to pay for winter fuel/two child. It would be tantamount to abandoning long-term growth for short term PLP management”.
The two spoke again during the disastrous vote on the welfare cuts, when No 10 was forced by rebellious MPs to abandon most of the proposals. Mandelson said he was unsure if Starmer would “survive” the loss of a vote. McFadden said the options were “defeat, pull bill or gut it all [and] destroy his authority”.
The exchanges also reveal a frustration with Streeting – and latterly Starmer – over the decision to recognise Palestine in July 2025. In the run-up to the decision, Mandelson said he had received “a wild long hysterical message from Wes about Israel. I pushed back. I can forward but reflects pretty badly on his maturity in my view.”
McFadden says several days later that Streeting has circulated videos and a note to cabinet on Gaza. A source close to Streeting said it was the testimony of three British doctors in Gaza on Israeli human rights violations, including harms caused to children.
Mandelson describes Streeting’s intervention as “pathetic” and adds: “I think Wes is experiencing an early mid-life crisis.”
The following day – when Starmer announced the decision to recognise Palestine – MacFadden said he was resisting a role in No 10, implying that it was because of the direction of the government. “I can’t if they are buying person with direction A and then he chooses direction B (yesterday),” he wrote.
Mandelson replied: “I have a feeling that Keir is now consistently going for direction B. His recanting on his immigration speech, on welfare, now Gaza. There is definitely a ‘let Keir be Keir’ trend. This is what Morgan senses and so it is particularly acute for him. His view from when Keir first stood is that the cycle has been the same, advance/buckle/advance/buckle.”
Over the course of their exchanges, Mandelson also expresses a surprising amount of frustration with McSweeney, with whom he is said to have been close. Mandelson refers repeatedly to documents sent to him by McSweeney, including strategy proposals, though the documents do not appear in the files.
In one exchange with McFadden, he questions the idea of setting up an external No 10 unit – an idea that never materialised. Mandelson wrote: “I am going mad with the things Morgan is sending me. I am trying to be constructive but I just don’t know what to say any more.
“This external strategy unit idea has come from a lack of belief that good people will come in to No 10 and it’s hard to get the bad ones to leave … I fear he is using excuse to keep people because he knows Keir won’t fire them.”
In the files, Mandelson also has several exchanges with ministers, senior civil servants and diplomats who suggest a degree of frustration with No 10’s operation.
The pensions minister, Torsten Bell, said to Mandelson: “Everyone seems to think it’s someone else’s job to get the policy right … which is very odd.” Mandelson replies, casting aspersions on the quality of advice in government: “As the saying goes: rubbish in rubbish out.”
