Peter Mandelson’s relationship with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein has finally triggered a police investigation, but the real scandal may be the network of influence he built within Labour — centered on his protégé Morgan McSweeney, who now effectively runs the Starmer government while advancing Israeli interests that helped orchestrate Corbyn’s removal.
By:Jody McIntyre is an independent journalist and political analyst. His investigations can also be found at jodymcintyre.substack.com.
In February 2017, at an event organised by the Jewish Chronicle, Peter Mandelson was recorded speaking about then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Mandelson said: “I work every single day in some small way to bring forward the end of his tenure.” He even gave examples of his efforts, “maybe an e-mail, a phone call, or a meeting I convene.” Following the release of the latest tranche of the Jeffrey Epstein files, which reveal the dark extent of Mandelson’s friendship with the convicted paedophile, the British police have raided his home. But Mandelson’s motivations have been plain to see long before these documents came to light.
On Friday night, I was contacted by a former Labour MP who served as a frontbencher under the leadership of Ed Miliband. He claimed that Peter Mandelson and Morgan McSweeney worked together to “get rid of” him. Mandelson is a long-time mentor of McSweeney, now widely seen as the most powerful figure in the Starmer administration. When McSweeney first joined Labour in 2001, he was assigned to Mandelson’s “Excalibur” project: a database used to gather information on “political rivals” within the party. Hugh Kerr, a former Labour MEP who had been expelled from Labour, claimed that several MPs had explained how Mandelson would “show them their Excalibur printouts and threaten them with action if they stepped out of line”.
Mandelson nurtured McSweeney, and the bullying tactics once employed by the “Prince of Darkness” were passed down to his protegé. McSweeney was instrumental in fomenting the Labour “anti-semitism” crisis and removing Corbyn as leader. He wrote in a confidential internal document that his Labour Together think tank would aim to produce “seemingly independent voices…to build up a political narrative and challenge…political extremism.”
Of course, Mandelson and McSweeney’s real problem with Corbyn was not “extremism”, but his support for the Palestinian cause. Labour Together was heavily funded by Trevor Chinn, a veteran Israel lobbyist who “had great concerns about the election of an outspoken opponent of the Jewish state as Labour leader.” Chinn also sat on the board of LT alongside McSweeney, and when McSweeney was caught concealing over £730,000 worth of donations to LT, he claimed that he was acting “to protect Trevor”.
Like Mandelson, McSweeney has a long history of furthering Israeli interests within the British political system. Before joining Labour, McSweeney spent a number of months living in an Israeli settlement, or “kibbutz”, named Sarid. Little is written about his stay, but the Jerusalem Post mentions that McSweeney became “closely acquainted” with Hashomer Hatza’ir, a Zionist settler movement founded in Austria-Hungary in 1913.
His mentor, too, is no stranger to the settler state. In 2005, Mandelson, then acting as EU Trade Commissioner, went to meet with then Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In a 2010 interview, Mandelson states that he “didn’t think twice” about speaking alongside Benjamin Netanyahu on another occasion, at a “huge rally in Trafalgar Square” organised by the Jewish community in Britain. Mandelson added: “My father became very militant and really emotional when Israel was under attack. In a sense it was the same for me.”
In 2024, Mandelson led a delegation of politicians from 22 European countries on a trip organised and paid for by ELNET, a shadowy lobby group that refuses to reveal its donors. ELNET’s UK branch is led by ex-Labour MP Joan Ryan, a former chair of Labour Friends of Israel and vice-President of the All-Party Britain-Israel Parliamentary Group. Ryan was another key member of the anti-Corbyn coup, quitting Labour in 2019 with claims that “Israel had been singled out for demonisation and de-legitimisation”. Ryan was also caught on camera in Al Jazeera’s The Lobby documentary, discussing a potential £1 million payment with Israeli embassy official Shai Masot.
Mandelson’s 2024 delegation met with Israeli President and genocidaire Isaac Herzog, as well as military spokesman Peter Lerner, a London-born “commander of IDF social media activities”. A newly-leaked e-mail from the Epstein Files with a list of visitors to his notorious island refers to a “Herzog” alongside Ehud Barak, the former Israeli Prime Minister who visited Epstein more than 30 times. Later, an e-mail address belonging to “Isaac Herzog” is listed next to Epstein’s. The messages come from an exchange between Epstein and Melanie Spinella, an assistant to billionaire Leon Black, who was a major funder of Herzog’s campaigns.
Mandelson has long said that convicted paedophile Epstein was his “best pal”, but we now know that as Business Secretary, Peter Mandelson passed classified government information to the suspected Israeli intelligence asset, even messaging him on the day former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown resigned: “Finally got him to go.”
Mandelson had two deputies as Business Secretary: David Lammy and Pat McFadden. Last year, Lammy, then Foreign Secretary, fiercely defended the appointment of the Epstein-associate as US Ambassador, describing him as “a man of considerable expertise”.
In 2014, Lammy’s failed bid to be Labour’s candidate for London mayor was led by David Mencer, a former chair of Labour Friends of Israel who went on to become a spokesman for the Israeli government. Trevor Chinn donated £30,000 to Lammy’s campaign. Chinn, McSweeney’s co-director at Labour Together, has funded both Conservative and Labour Friends of Israel throughout his life, and was personally awarded for “service to the state of Israel” by suspected guest to Epstein Island, Isaac Herzog.
Another of Lammy’s financial backers is Lady Woodford-Hollick, the wife of Labour peer Clive Hollick. Clive Hollick was another funder of the Labour Together project, but he also previously served as a Special Adviser to Peter Mandelson.
What did David Lammy know about the Mandelson-Epstein communications?
Peter Mandelson’s other deputy was Pat McFadden, once féted as “the most powerful Labour politician most have never heard of”. Indeed, in the same fawning article printed by the Guardian in 2023, Mandelson pours praise on his former assistant, saying: “Pat has seen it all.”
During the 2024 general election campaign, McSweeney and McFadden’s desks were stationed next to each other at the centre of Labour headquarters. His wife, Marianna McFadden, reported directly to McSweeney. Epstein-informant Mandelson was delighted with the arrangement, saying that “Pat is cautious…[whereas] Morgan is a hard-driven street fighter.”
The British media are desperate to portray Epstein as a “KGB spy” who would somehow still require Mandelson’s help to “obtain a Russian visa”, but the facts tell a different story.
In 2013, Epstein instructed Ehud Barak to seek Mandelson’s assistance in the sale of the largest Israeli fuel firm at the time, Paz Oil Company. Mandelson replied: “Am interested in Paz. Also in how Israel is planning to transport its offshore field gas to Europe and elsewhere.”
That same year, Mandelson asked Epstein to connect him to Barak to get his opinion on an Israeli “political consultant” called Asaf Eisin. Mandelson wrote: “Can you ask Ehud whether he knows/thinks of this Israeli guy living in London.”
Despite Mandelson’s sway within Labour spanning over decades, he has become too tainted even for Starmer. However, McSweeney proved tougher for the beleaguered Prime Minister to drop. After all, it was McSweeney who pushed for Mandelson to be appointed US Ambassador, even in the face of warnings from state security services. Another whistleblower who contacted me after my initial investigations into McSweeney, a former staffer in the Momentum group, claims that Mandelson’s protegé is acting as Starmer’s handler, with compromising material being used to “keep him in line”.
The former Labour frontbencher who contacted me on Thursday night insists that it is McSweeney and his secretive inner circle, not the Prime Minister, who are really running the show. But is McSweeney acting for the British public, or on behalf of powerful foreign interests?
In another leaked e-mail from the files, Epstein’s co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell writes to Mandelson: “Pete, what is wrong. I am here for you. Call me – Clinton sd he [sic] will do what you want at the conference…PS Don’t be disgusting”. The e-mail is dated 14 September 2002. On 2 October 2002, Clinton addressed the Labour conference in Blackpool. Ghislaine of course was the daughter of Robert Maxwell, the former Labour MP, media baron, and, according to ex-Israeli intelligence operative Ari Ben-Menashe, Mossad asset.
The impending release of the Mandelson files will be devastating not only for Starmer, but for every Labour MP who defended him. Wes Streeting called him a “legend”. Darren Jones posted: “Mandelson on the platform – love him!!” David Lammy said he was “a man of considerable expertise”. Luke Akehurst gushed that he “saved the Labour Party”. But to Jeffrey Epstein, he was just “Petie”.
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