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It was the evening of 6 May 2010 and months after being released from jail for procuring a child for prostitution, Jeffrey Epstein was curious as to the result of Britain’s general election.
“Well?” he emailed Peter Mandelson, the then de facto deputy prime minister in Gordon Brown’s government.
Twenty minutes later, and a few hours before the polls were due to close, Mandelson responded: “We are praying for a hung parliament. Alternatively, a well hung young man.”
In an interview with the BBC last month that appeared to be an attempt at rehabilitation after being withdrawn as US ambassador over fresh revelations about his ties to Epstein, Mandelson insisted that he had been “at the edge of this man’s life”.
If the implication was that he was insignificant to Epstein, that may be arguable. But some of the millions of fresh emails released by the US justice department seem to make clear that Epstein was right at the heart of Mandelson’s world for a number of years.
Taken together, and followed by his resignation from the Labour party and calls for a police investigation, they appear to be the epitaph for a politician who may finally have encountered a scandal he is unable to outrun.
Mandelson’s relationship with the financier was professional and personal – intimate even – with the boundaries between the two blurred to the point of being non-existent.
When the Labour peer believed that his then-partner, now husband, Reinaldo Avila da Silva had gained access to his text messages in March 2010, it was to Epstein that he turned for help.
“I have had v bad setback with R who has somehow got into my texts,” wrote Mandelson, who by then was already number two in the UK government. “What shall I do? You may need to help. How does he see them?”
Epstein responded: “This email is probably compromised as well, lets talk.”
On buying a new house and wondering whether he should borrow £4m at a 3% interest rate, it was again Epstein’s advice that he sought.
Then there were consultations about how to build his business career when Labour lost the 2010 election. Would taking a place on the board Facebook be a good move, he asked. Got me any “deal(s) yet” he wondered in July 2011.
Epstein responded: “Spent the day with Gates, in Seattle, having monstrous fun.”
It was, by any measure, an intense friendship.
“Need to talk, feeling confused,” Mandelson wrote in April 2009. “Where r u? I miss you”, he emailed on 22 December 2010.
The drip-feed of revelations in recent months about the extent of this relationship has cost Mandelson the job he loved and the status he craves. On Monday, the most damning email yet became public.
Mandelson appears to have leaked a sensitive Whitehall document to Epstein, who was still under house arrest at the time, detailing the UK government’s tax plans and intention to sell £20bn in assets.
He forwarded the document in June 2009 with the comment: “Interesting note that’s gone to the PM.”
Emails had already emerged over the weekend that suggested Mandelson had received three payments of $25,000 (£18,000) each from Epstein when he was a backbench MP in 2003 and 2004. Others showed that his partner had received thousands of pounds in 2009 and 2010 when he was business secretary.
Mandelson has said he has no recollection of the payments to him.
Keir Starmer said on Monday that he should lose his title and seat in the House of Lords, and launched an inquiry into his “conduct during his time as a government minister”.
Just eight months ago, Mandelson was standing by Donald Trump’s side in the Oval Office, being complemented for “his beautiful accent” as he signed off on a trade deal that would avoid the US president’s “liberation day” tariffs.
How did Epstein end up taking such a cataclysmically central role in Mandelson’s personal and professional life?
Mandelson worked as a consultant for the media mogul Robert Maxwell, the owner of the Daily Mirror, in the late 1980s. Maxwell’s daughter, Ghislaine, was a social livewire with a taste for the finer things in life, as was Mandelson, and they grew fond of each other.
She moved to New York in the early 1990s after her father, who had stolen millions from the Mirror pension scheme, drowned after plunging off the side of his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine.
Epstein and Robert Maxwell had been business acquaintances. It seems that a romance blossomed between the late mogul’s daughter and the young financier.
Mandelson was introduced to Epstein around 2001 at a summer house in Martha’s Vineyard owned by Lynn Forester de Rothschild and her husband, Evelyn.
Still a central figure in the New Labour project despite two resignations from cabinet, in 1998 and 2001, Mandelson had evidently already become close to Epstein by 2003.
In a 50th birthday book for him, compiled by Maxwell, Mandelson described Epstein as his “best pal”.
By 2008, when Epstein was convicted, Mandelson was an EU trade commissioner in Brussels. “You have to be incredibly resilient, fight for early release and be philosophical about it as much as you can,” Mandelson wrote.
The relationship certainly did not wither when he returned to the UK to be business secretary in Brown’s government. “Had a long dream about you last night,” Mandelson wrote in March 2009. “Going to GM plants today to try and assure their future.”
When there were further troubles between Mandelson and his partner in July 2009, it was Epstein who picked up the phone.
“I was immersed in Afghanistan … thanks for talking to Reinaldo,” Mandelson wrote. “It did him (therefore me) a lot of good. You now see the problems. I cannot talk to him about these things at all, he won’t listen. I am doing Sunday media then will call. Thanks again xxx”.
Epstein responded: “I as always am there.”
Mandelson was elevated further in Brown’s government in 2010 to the role of first secretary, a position that made him de facto deputy prime minister.
Eleven days later, he wrote to Epstein to tell him he would be in New York. “Shall I stay at your’s Friday-Sunday this weekend?” he asked.
Epstein was concerned about press “issues”. Mandelson responded: “I am in NY peivately [sic]. Sd be ok. Better ‘facilities’ at yours.”
Their mutually advantageous friendship remained undiminished after the election defeat.
“Need a Lord on the board,” Mandelson asked of Epstein in one email of that period.
“Are you enjoying yourself,” he asked in another on 28 July 2010. “Oh boy,” responded Epstein.
In August 2011, Mandelson wrote to Epstein to say he had met a mutual friend at a lunch with Nat Rothschild, the son of Jacob and Serena Rothschild of the banking dynasty.
“Mentioned you at lunch and she raced my comment that you are one of my best friends and said you are the nicest and cleverest people she knows and how much you and taught her [sic],” he wrote.
In April 2012, Epstein emailed Mandelson. “How are things going? he asked. Mandelson responded that he was at the China Boao forum in Hainan, where he was “trying to make an honest living”. “Trying something new,” Epstein answered. “Indeed,” he responded.
