Now you see him, now you do not! Wes Streeting deletes footage of mentor Mandelson he is now calling ‘silly and reckless’

Bursting with pride, a newly elected Wes Streeting posts a photograph of his mum, Corrina, in the kitchen of her home with a smiling Lord Mandelson

The photograph was published just one day after Streeting became a Labour MP for the first time, winning the seat of Ilford North in May 2015.

Mandelson, who was then running his public affairs company Global Counsel, had gone to Ilford to campaign for the young Streeting, whom he regarded as something of a protege.

‘Oh, look it’s my mum’s new mate Peter Mandelson on the telly,’ wrote Streeting at the time. ‘Mum, a big Lefty, loved him today.’

The uber-ambitious Streeting, now Health Secretary, rarely hesitates to exploit his working-class family background for political gain.

After all, he revealed in the Daily Mail that his mother was born in Holloway prison when her own mother was serving time for receiving stolen goods purloined by her husband, Bill.

Streeting’s grandfather had been a failed armed robber who consorted with the notorious East End gangsters, the Kray twins.

But the photo, which he once relished, has now vanished from Streeting’s social media accounts. A few days earlier, another picture from that same 2015 election campaign was also visible.

It bore the caption: ‘We have only gone and got Peter Mandelson out on the Ilford North campaign trail.’

Streeting, then just 32 and working in the charity sector, could hardly believe his luck that Mandelson, one of the biggest beasts in the Labour Party jungle, was taking time to campaign for him in a marginal seat, which he wrested from the Tories with a majority of just 589.

Surprise, surprise! That photo, too, has disappeared from Streeting’s online library. And so has one from the 2019 general election campaign, another image once given pride of place in Streeting’s collection.

The picture shows Streeting canvassing for votes with a group of people including the Labour grandee. The caption makes clear his admiration for the now disgraced peer: ‘Getting out the Ilford North constituency Labour party vote with LabourLordsUK legend Lord Mandelson,’ it reads.

He might have regarded him as a legend then, but that photo has also now gone the same way as the others.

Streeting, when challenged about the disappearing images, replied: ‘The photos have people in it that are not me,’ presumably meaning that he had deleted them for the sake of others.

The answer is fooling nobody. Streeting, 43, and now the bookmakers’ favourite to be the next Labour leader, is trying to rewrite political history.

For years, Mandelson was one of his closest political friends and advisers. But with the older man now facing a criminal investigation amid one of the worst political scandals in modern history – after allegedly leaking commercially sensitive secrets to his paedophile pal Jeffrey Epstein – the Mandelson connection has become toxic for Streeting.

Streeting is not the only one trying to alter the past. Among the people captured in the vanished photograph from 2019 is a man called Joe Dancey, who just happens to be Streeting’s partner.

They share a home in his Ilford constituency and became engaged to be married in 2022. Dancey, 49, is a politician in his own right. He was Labour’s candidate in Stockton West at the last general election when, against the odds, the Conservatives held the seat.

Dancey, who is desperate to win a seat at the next election, is another who knows Mandelson very well. But perhaps he would rather people didn’t know just how well.

On Linked-In, the online CV service, he used to proudly boast he was: ‘Political assistant to Peter Mandelson, House of Commons, full-time 2001-2004.’

Curiously, the same Linked-In entry has now been edited to say: ‘Political assistant House of Commons full-time 2001-2004. Three years.’

The reference to Mandelson has been removed by Dancey who now runs a communications company, Endeavour Advisory. That followed an unsuccessful stint as a senior party apparatchik after Labour’s election victory last year.

Despite Streeting’s efforts to erase the past, I can disclose that his links to Mandelson stretch back almost 20 years.

They first became close when he was president of the National Union of Students between 2008 and 2010. That post is a traditional launching pad for a political career in the Labour Party.

At the time, Gordon Brown’s Labour government was undertaking a major review of student loans, which came under the ministerial portfolio of Trade Secretary Mandelson.

While Trade Secretary and student leader were on opposite sides of the argument (Streeting opposed attempts to make student loans more expensive), Mandelson was struck by Streeting’s potential.

A senior Labour source tells me: ‘Mandelson became the young Wes’s mentor. He was his adviser, his confidant.

‘They were close friends. Wes could not believe his luck. He had been taken under the wing of one of the cleverest Labour strategists of his generation.

‘Mandelson had been a Cabinet minister, an EU commissioner, and a confidant of the last two Labour prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

‘And yet he was finding time to give advice to young Wes.

‘Wes is naive to take down the photos. It just looks like he’s got something to hide.’

In truth, Mandelson was cultivating the young Streeting because he liked to create a network of influential voices within the Labour Party and he observed that Streeting was leadership material.

Mandelson and Streeting combined again when the Marxist sympathiser Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader between 2015 and 2020. The two men plotted to water down the influence of the hard-Left and to find a champion to replace Corbyn.

Mandelson was a member of a Sunday supper club held at the Kennington home of Roger Liddle, a fellow Labour peer. Liddle was a longstanding friend and business associate of Mandelson dating back to before the 1997 general election.

They wrote a book together in 1996: The Blair Revolution, Can New Labour Deliver? Streeting and his partner Dancey were also regular diners at the Liddle supper club. Guests were ardent Remainers, of course, champions of a second Brexit referendum and all admirers of Tony Blair.

Streeting, the party’s most accomplished media performer, is now frontrunner to succeed the embattled Sir Keir Starmer if there is a leadership contest. Despite his popularity, Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, is unable to find a Commons seat.

A contest will be triggered if 81 Labour MPs, 20 per cent of the parliamentary party, put forward one name to challenge Starmer.

Streeting boasts privately that he has the backing of at least 200 of Labour’s 404 MPs.

Many of them are part of the intake of 231 Labour MPs who were elected for the first time in 2024. The majority will be appalled by the Mandelson revelations.

Another Labour source said this: ‘Be in no doubt, Wes Streeting is Peter Mandelson’s choice to be the next Labour leader. Wes will not thank anyone for saying it, but that is the truth. Mandelson sees Streeting as the true keeper of the Blairite flame.’

Ruthlessly ambitious, Streeting has turned on his former mentor in the past few days accusing him of betraying Britain, two prime ministers and Jeffrey Epstein’s victims. ‘He is stupid, irresponsible and reckless,’ he said.

But back in September, when photos surfaced that suggested Mandelson was much closer to Epstein than had been realised, Streeting took a different view.

Loyally defending his friend, he said: ‘Our ambassador has made it very clear he deeply regrets ever having been introduced to Epstein. But I don’t think we should regard everyone as guilty by association.’

Mandelson was sacked just days later.

Amid the febrile atmosphere of Westminster, it’s an open secret that Streeting has been not ‘plotting but planning’ a leadership bid. Before his fall from grace, Labour’s Dark Lord would have been a key adviser in that.

So, will Mandelson now truly be cut off or will Wes Streeting still discreetly seek the shamed former ambassador’s sinuous words of advice?