Former United States Ambassador Lord Peter Mandelson has resigned as a UK lawmaker amid a growing political scandal over allegations he passed market-sensitive information to the late convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein.
UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer had threatened to draw up legislation to strip Labour Party grandee Mandelson of his title, while the Metropolitan police have launched an investigation examining information relating to alleged misconduct in public office.
The Cabinet Office said it had passed material to the police after an initial review of the latest tranche of documents from the so-called Epstein files found they contained “likely market-sensitive information” and that official handling safeguards had been “compromised.”
The Lord Speaker of the UK Parliament’s upper chamber, the House of Lords, announced that 72-year-old Mandelson is to step down on Wednesday.
Starmer told his Cabinet the alleged passing of highly-sensitive government business during the premiership of Labour’s Gordon Brown to Epstein was “disgraceful” and said Mandelson had “let his country down.”
Mandelson has been a highly influential member of the Labour Party for more than 40 years, surviving numerous scandals during the premierships of Sir Tony Blair and then Brown. He was appointed the UK’s ambassador to the United States in December 2024, before being fired in September 2025 following the publication of emails confirming his continued correspondence with Epstein after the pedophile’s 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from an underage girl.
Files released by the U.S. Department of Justice appear to show Mandelson passed confidential information to Epstein while serving as business secretary in Brown’s Labour administration as it dealt with the 2008 financial crash and its aftermath. One email from 2010 appears to show Mandelson tipping off Epstein that Brown was about to resign.
Following the May 2010 general election, which resulted in a hung parliament, Brown made a doomed attempt to form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. On May 10, 2010, an email appears to show Mandelson telling the billionaire financier, “Finally got him to go today.” Brown announced his resignation the next day.
‘Inexcusable and Unpatriotic’
Brown, who succeeded Blair as prime minister in 2007, said he had written to Metropolitan Police chief Sir Mark Rowley to provide information relating to Mandelson’s “inexcusable and unpatriotic act.”
Starmer has come under criticism from opposition parties and from within his own party for his judgment in appointing Mandelson as ambassador to Washington when his links to Epstein were already known. Labour MP and former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell said on X that he had “warned” the prime minister over Mandelson but he “never listened.”
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said that Starmer opened Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting by saying he was “appalled by the information that had emerged over the weekend in the Epstein files.”
Starmer said the alleged passing-on of emails of highly sensitive government business was “disgraceful” and that he was “not reassured that the totality of information had yet emerged,” the spokesman said.
“The Prime Minister told Cabinet that Peter Mandelson should no longer be a member of the House of Lords or use the title, and said he had asked the Cabinet Secretary to review all available information regarding Mandelson’s contact with Jeffrey Epstein during his time serving as a government minister.
“He said he’d made it clear the government would co-operate with the police in any inquiries they carried out, but he said the government had to press and go further, working at speed in the Lords, including legislatively if necessary,” the spokesman said, adding that Starmer said Mandelson had “let his country down.”
Starmer ordered officials to draft legislation to remove Mandelson’s peerage—a rare move not enacted since a law was passed to strip titles from nobles who sided with the Germans in the First World War. While he has announced he will not be sitting as a peer in the House of Lords, Mandelson is still allowed to use his title.
‘Market-Sensitive Information’
The Cabinet Office referred material to the police after an initial review of the latest Epstein files showed they likely contain market-sensitive information and suggested that “safeguards were compromised,” No. 10 said.
Brown said in a statement: “I have today written to the Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley with information relevant to his investigation of Lord Mandelson’s disclosure of market sensitive and confidential government information to the American financier, Jeffrey Epstein, an inexcusable and unpatriotic act at a time when the whole government and country were attempting to address the global financial crisis that was damaging so many livelihoods.”
Mandelson appeared to tell Epstein he would lobby ministers over a tax on bankers’ bonuses in 2009, and to confirm an imminent 500 billion-euro ($591 billion) bailout package for the euro the day before it was announced in 2010.
In June 2009, Mandelson appears to have passed Epstein an internal assessment of an “asset sales plan,” which Mandelson refers to as an “interesting note that’s gone to the PM.”
The financier, who was found dead in a New York prison cell in August 2019, was also apparently sent an analysis of business lending in August 2009 drawn up by minister Baroness Vadera.
The sender of the message to Epstein has been redacted, but Mandelson was part of the government email thread.
‘Lapse in Judgment’
The files contain reference to a 10,000-pound ($13,700) transfer from Epstein.
In an interview with the Times of London, Mandelson has previously admitted to a “lapse in judgment” over what he said was Epstein’s funding of an osteopathy course for the politician’s husband, Reinaldo Avila da Silva, in 2009.
The peer rejected the suggestion that the payment left him open to bribery claims, with Epstein lobbying him to change rules on banker bonuses.
Mandelson said he had “absolutely no recollection” of receiving payments totaling approximately £55,000 ($75,000) from Epstein between 2003 and 2004, as bank details in the latest files indicated.
The politician, who was made a peer by Brown in 2008, has been on a leave of absence from Parliament and his imminent departure was announced by Lord Speaker Lord Forsyth of Drumlean.
The Lord Speaker told the upper chamber: “Given the public interest and for the convenience of the House, I’ve decided to inform the House that the clerk of the Parliaments has today received notification from Lord Mandelson of his intention to retire from the House, effective from Feb. 4.”
Ambassador Position
Speaking to Sky News, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said that Starmer has “his fingerprints all over” the decision to appoint Mandelson as ambassador to the United States, which she labelled an embarrassment.
Badenoch said, “He knew of all the allegations, concerns, and reports about Peter Mandelson, knew that he was a close friend and associate of a convicted pedophile, and he still gave him the biggest job in the Foreign Office at a time when UK-U.S. relations were at a critical point.”
“I think it is a national embarrassment,” she said, adding, “There are many people who should have been given that job, or should have been interviewed for that job, and they didn’t get a chance. That’s not right.”
The Metropolitan Police released a statement on Tuesday evening confirming that an investigation into misconduct in a public office had been launched.
“Following the further release of millions of court documents in relation to Jeffrey Epstein by the United States Department of Justice, the Met received a number of reports into alleged misconduct in public office including a referral from the UK Government,” Commander of the Metropolitan Police Ella Marriott said.
“I can confirm that the Metropolitan Police has now launched an investigation into a 72-year-old man, a former Government Minister, for misconduct in public office offences.”
PA Media contributed to this report.
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