Just listening to Nick Thomas–Symonds, minister for the Cabinet Office, being interviewed on the Today programme this morning about the release of new material about the PM’s decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as US ambassador and it’s abundantly clear how ministers and the Labour hierarchy are circling the wagons in the hope of sweeping this scandal under the carpet. The drip, drip, drip release of these documents is designed to enable a cover up of a wrong-headed and corrupt decision that should never have been made. The upper echelons of Labour’s high command hope that the passage of time will deflect people’s attention from a serious of calamitous mistakes and willful ignorance that should have no place in a sanely run government. Ministers and Keir Starmer himself are engaged in an operation to hide corruption and wrongdoing at the heart of government. Their behaviour is craven and amounts to nothing less than gaslighting the public.
As well as being the Cabinet Office minister, Thomas–Symonds is also an academic, author and barrister. A reputable individual in the eyes of the powers that be and someone who can be reliably rolled out to defend the indefensible in a calm and plausible manner when the occasion demands it. On the Today programme he was grilled mercilessly by the journalist Emma Barnett, who questioned him in her typically forthright fashion about documents released by the government that showed that Starmer was warned that Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein posed a “reputational risk” even before he was confirmed as US ambassador. Lest we forget, Starmer knew about the disgraced peer’s history as a ‘friend’ of the paedophile Epstein and could not fail to be aware of Mandelson’s history of being sacked twice from ministerial positions due to dubiety and being less than truthful. Yet he chose to ignore all the evidence before him and appoint him to one of the most influential positions in government.
The documents the government has just been forced to release reveal that a due diligence document sent to the PM on 11 December 2024 – nine days before Mandelson was confirmed as ambassador – raised a number of issues which could pose a “reputational risk” to the government. It also highlighted a 2019 report commissioned by the US bank JP Morgan which found that Epstein appeared to “maintain a particularly close relationship” with Lord Mandelson. The document also notes that the peer reportedly stayed in Epstein’s house while the financier was in jail in June 2009. In his interview on the Today programme, Thomas-Symonds glibly and sophistically said that the document “prompted the prime minister to seek assurances, to ask questions”. Yet Starmer still thought it was perfectly fine to appoint Mandelson and no one in government tried to persuade him otherwise.
As trained barristers and lawyers, neither Keir Starmer nor Nick Thomas–Symonds (pictured above) can claim to be naïve when it comes to getting to the truth of a particular matter. Yet they expect the public to believe that there is nothing unusual in a situation where they ignore the evidence staring them in the face that making such an appointment was a sensible thing to do and worth the risk. This is clearly nonsense. These ‘reputable’ and ‘upstanding’ ministers of the crown would have us believe that they could not have acted any differently when they were faced with someone who was lying to them about the nature of their relationship with a convicted paedophile. Again, this is nonsense. They are as much liars as the man they claim to have been lying to them. The decision to appointment Mandelson was a disastrous one. It should never have been made but the truth is that Starmer and the Labour high command thought that they could get away with it so they went ahead with it anyway.
Of course, they are now being supported by a supine media in passing off their obfuscations to the public. Witness the ‘analysis’, of the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason as he describes the document drop about the decision to appoint Mandelson as “interesting, but not explosive”. Mason pathetically concludes that the whole episode is “a distraction for ministers” and “a gushing torrent of awkwardness and embarrassment.” And so, we have the media establishment colluding with the political establishment and trying to infer that there is nothing to see here other than a spat over who lied to whom and about what. This won’t wash. What we see here is nothing less than corruption and wrongdoing at the heart of government and the defending of the indefensible by a venal and craven political establishment.
