Prince of Darkness, Patron Saint of Paedophiles: Is This a Government of Service or Just a Netflix Original Gone Horribly Wrong?

The Return of Lord Voldemort—Sorry, Mandelson
You’d think after two resignations, one Dome fiasco, and enough Machiavellian intrigue to make Niccolò himself put down the quill in awe, Peter Mandelson might finally retreat to a quiet life of ruinously overpriced Tuscan olive oil and whispering vague threats at garden gnomes.

But no. Like a cursed political horcrux, he came back again. And again. And again. Then he was appointed as Britain’s ambassador to the United States by a man who looks like he irons his socks and drinks tea with a thermometer.

Yes, Keir Starmer, the Labour leader with all the inspirational vigour of a flat Diet Lilt, took one look at the scandal-stained lord and thought: “That’s the man I want representing Britain to Donald Trump.” Which is a bit like hiring Harold Shipman as your Care Quality Commission inspector.

A Man So Toxic, Chernobyl Consults Him on PR
We are, of course, talking about Peter Mandelson — the man affectionately known as the Prince of Darkness, which is how Westminster says “please don’t leave me alone in a room with him.” This time, though, the darkness wasn’t just metaphorical — it came with a private jet, a private island, and a horrifyingly non-metaphorical convicted paedophile named Jeffrey Epstein.

Let’s be clear: if you’re emailing a man who had his own sex dungeon flight schedule, telling him he’s your “best pal” and begging him to “stick with you” through a “terrible situation,” the only job you should be getting is something involving a mop, a visor, and a probation officer.

But instead, Mandy got a diplomatic post and a handshake from a sitting US President. What was in that vetting process — a BuzzFeed quiz?

Starmer’s Blind Spot: Rehabilitating Vampires
Starmer’s decision to bring Mandelson back was sold as a stroke of genius — a political comeback worthy of Lazarus, with slightly better tailoring. Starmer himself has always been the sort of man who looks like he’d turn down a slice of cake at a child’s birthday because he’d read the terms and conditions. So when he said Mandelson had his full confidence, we assumed he’d checked the small print.

Apparently not. Because now, as Epstein’s love letters from the British establishment begin to ooze out like sewage from a broken Victorian drain, Starmer has had to sack his man in Washington.
But only after defending him in public, of course. In Starmer-world, loyalty is a candle that only burns after it’s been dropped in a puddle.

He did the same with Angela Rayner: valiantly stood by her right up until she packed up her Brexit-shaped rhetoric and flounced off like a cleaner told she had to tidy up after another cocaine-fuelled private school debate.

This isn’t leadership. It’s eventually realising you’ve hired Satan to run the parish council.

A Government of Service? Only If You're a Billionaire Pervert or a Friend of One
Let’s remind ourselves: Mandelson wasn’t just sending late-night xoxo emails to a convicted child sex trafficker — he was advising him on media strategy, offering Sun Tzu quotes, and possibly trying to rehabilitate his public image like some twisted episode of Queer Eye for the Necrotic Soul.

“You have to be incredibly resilient,” he told Epstein, “fight for early release and be philosophical.”
Philosophical? About what? Whether preying on underage girls is an Aristotelian concept?

This is a man who once said he was “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich,” and clearly he meant no matter how they got there. The Labour Party — the party of working people, industrial dignity and beige community centres — is now fielding ex-ministers who send pep talks to sex criminals.

Is this a government of service?
Yes — if you’re serving champagne at a hedge fund orgy hosted by Ghislaine Maxwell and catered by moral bankruptcy.

Diplomacy as Theatre: The Tragedy of Mandelson’s Hand-Holding Moment
Of course, there’s the image — the one destined to haunt politics students and exorcists alike: Peter Mandelson, clasped hand-in-hand with Donald Trump, gazing into his eyes like a Bond villain proposing a free trade agreement over poisoned tea.

Trump called him “a good-looking fellow,” which is possibly the lowest bar ever set in international diplomacy, narrowly beating Putin calling Boris Johnson “fragrant”.

But this was the culmination of Mandelson’s third coming: a man who went from cash for passports to cuddles for perverts, holding the hand of the most chaotic president since Caligula declared war on Neptune.

And the Worst Part? Starmer Thought It Was Working.
The trade deal was going ahead. The Americans were talking to us. Mandelson, we were told, was navigating the Trump circus brilliantly. And Starmer, watching from his beige bunker in Islington, thought: “At last, competence!”

Well yes, that’s true — in the same way that a cockroach surviving a nuclear blast is competent.

But now the whole diplomatic exercise lies in a fetid, smoking pile of shame. The emails are out. The “best pal” quotes are public. The only question is whether Mandelson also left a birthday card on Epstein’s fridge before the FBI bagged it.

No Fourth Coming. Only the Long, Wriggling Descent into Legacy Management Hell.
The irony is that Mandelson, like a Bond villain with a PhD in smugness, probably thought he was untouchable. Twice forced to resign, and yet he kept coming back — like a moth to scandal. Or more accurately, like a PR consultant to a disgraced hedge fund paedophile.

He’s the man who ran Blair’s media machine, the architect of New Labour’s image makeover, and now he’s spent more time in Epstein’s inbox than his own constituents ever managed in his diary.

And this is what we now call “public service.”
A disgraced former spin doctor trading international influence for email flirtations with the world’s most notorious sex trafficker.

Final Thought: Government of Service, Or the Service of the Government to Itself?
We are governed now by people who think the biggest sin is being caught, not being wrong. Who sack people not for moral failure, but for PR inconvenience. Who confuse diplomacy with damage control, and integrity with plausible deniability.

And if this is a government of service, it’s the kind you get from a broadband provider that traps you in a 24-month contract and then cuts you off halfway through Bake Off.

Because while Mandelson may finally be out — don’t worry — the rot that let him back in is still very much in charge.