19m ago 14.08 GMT
Mandelson engaged in ‘shocking’ betrayal by leaking
information to Epstein, says Labour peer
Catherine MacLeod, a former special adviser to Alistair Darling who is now a
Labour peer, has said that it was “awful” to learn that Peter Mandelson was
advising banks how lobby against a tax on bonuses being proposed by
Darling when he was chancellor.
Referring to the revelation that Mandelson, via Jeffrey Epstein, suggested
that it would be good for JPMorgan to “mildly threaten” Darling (see
9.38am), MacLeod told Radio 4’s the World at One:
44 It is awful that one of Alistair Darling’s colleagues was suggesting this ...
Quite a lot of important and influential bankers employed whatever tactics they
thought would get them somewhere with Alistair Darling.
She also said that revelations about Mandelson leaking internal government
information when he was business secretary to Epstein were “absolutely
shocking”. (See 12.41pm.) She said that this amounted to “betrayal” and that
Mandelson was letting down his colleagues. “There is nothing that can be
said in its defence.”
A vast trove of Epstein documents has been released in the US, and reporters
are still going through them. One shows Mandelson forwarding a memo
written by one special adviser to Gordon Brown, the then PM, to Epstein.
There is at least one other example of Epstein having a business-related
internal goverment memo from around this time, without it being clear how
Epstein obtained it.
