STEPHEN GLOVER: Mandelson’s hyperlinks to Russia dwarf these of Nigel Farage. Is it even remotely potential that Starmer did not know?

On several occasions over the past 18 months Sir Keir Starmer has accused Nigel Farage and Reform UK of being pro-Putin and sympathetic towards Russia.

He was at it again on Saturday during a security conference in Munich. The Prime Minister claimed that Reform (and the Greens) are ‘soft on Russia and weak on Nato’.

Starmer wants to smear Farage in the eyes of patriotic ex-Labour voters who are thinking of voting Reform in the local elections on May 7, and at the next General Election.

In fact, as we’ll see, there’s little evidence that Farage holds a candle for Russia or its tyrannical leader. In the perilous situation in which he finds himself, the Prime Minister would be wise to keep his trap shut unless he wants to be accused of being a Grade-A hypocrite.

For there is a long-standing Labour figure whose connections to Russia dwarf those of Farage or any other living British politician. I am referring to Peter Mandelson.

This is the same Mandelson who was appointed British Ambassador to the United States by Starmer over a year ago, and has since been publicly disowned because of his close relationship with the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

The PM recently accused Mandelson of ‘betraying our country, our Parliament and my party’. The charge is that the disgraced peer concealed the extent of his dealings with Epstein during a vetting process for the ambassadorship, and when in government passed secrets to his paedophile friend.

Yet Starmer has so far steered clear of potentially even more compromising evidence that links Mandelson to senior figures in Putin’s Russia. These connections could turn out to be explosive.

Saturday’s Daily Mail revealed that, as EU trade commissioner, Mandelson made two journeys in 2004 in an aircraft belonging to Oleg Deripaska, an aluminium billionaire especially favoured by Vladimir Putin.

First he flew from Brussels to Luton in Deripaska’s Gulfstream IV executive jet. Then he continued to Rotterdam in the same aircraft. Later that day he arrived at an EU-Russia trade summit in the Hague attended by the Russian President, whom Mandelson met.

A member of the flight crew has told the Mail that Mandelson was ‘very ratty’ because he wanted to get to Rotterdam as quickly as possible. He failed to tell the EU authorities that he had flown on Deripaska’s jet, as he was obliged to.

The EU subsequently slashed aluminium tariffs – to the delight of Oleg Deripaska, who became one of the world’s ten richest men – and to the benefit of the Russian economy.

An extraordinary coincidence? No one is suggesting that as trade commissioner Mandelson was powerful enough to dictate the EU’s policy on aluminium tariffs single-handedly.

But there are questions to be answered. There must be an official inquiry into Mandelson’s links to Deripaska and other Russians. The Metropolitan Police’s investigation into the disgraced peer over misconduct in public life won’t encompass aluminium smelters in Siberia.

On which point, it has long been known that in 2005 Mandelson had a private, unofficial and undeclared dinner in Moscow with the Russian finance minister, arranged by Deripaska.

He was then flown 2,000 miles to Siberia on one of Deripaska’s private jets. While there, he was whipped in a traditional Russian ‘banya’ or sauna, stayed at the oligarch’s dacha and toured his metal plants.

More harmless fun? Mandelson saw a lot of one of the world’s ten richest men in those days. In the summer of 2008 he holidayed on his yacht in Corfu. Rather comically, the future Tory Chancellor George Osborne and his then wife, who were in the vicinity, were invited aboard.

The relationship between Labour smoothie Mandelson and Tory smoothie Osborne is for another day. But I should mention that when Mandelson was recently seen relieving himself against a garden wall in Notting Hill, he had just been enjoying an evening drink in Osborne’s house.

To return to Mandelson’s Russian connections. The Mail on Sunday has reported that in 2008 EU intelligence sources were concerned that Russian intelligence was targeting Mandelson through his relationship with Deripaska. British security officials are believed to have interviewed the peer.

His links with Russia didn’t end then. In 2012 he was appointed to the board of Sistema, a Russian conglomerate, as a non-executive director, which role he retained for four years.

The company was hardly Russia’s answer to John Lewis. One of its prominent figures was Arnold Spivakovsky, who was involved with a notorious crime gang. He was arrested in 2017 and died two years later in murky circumstances.

The Prime Minister claims he was lied to by Mandelson in the vetting process. Maybe he was. But is it remotely conceivable that he wasn’t briefed by MI5 and MI6 about the disgraced peer’s colourful Russian links before foolishly appointing him British Ambassador to Washington?

As far back as 2017, the investigative reporter John Sweeney was looking into Mandelson’s Russian connections, including Sistema, on behalf of BBC2’s Newsnight. The programme was pulled for reasons never explained to him or his immediate boss. Had Mandelson threatened the BBC?

Which brings me back to Farage, often depicted by Starmer as a Russian stooge. The evidence is slight. Asked by a magazine in 2014 which world leader he most admired, he replied: ‘As an operator, but not as a human being, I would say Putin.’ Silly, but hardly shameful.

Farage has also been criticised over his contention that Nato’s expansion in Eastern Europe helped to provoke Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Eminent historians such as the American George Kennan warned against encroachment by Nato. Such a view doesn’t make Farage a Putin stooge.

An undeniable black mark against Reform is the ten-and-a-half-year prison sentence handed down to its former leader in Wales, Nathan Gill, for accepting up to £40,000 in bribes for pro-Russia interviews and speeches. Yet Gill is surely no more than a small-time crook and idiot.

As I say, Starmer would be wise to stop throwing rotten apples at Farage as long as so many unanswered questions cling to one of the linchpins of New Labour about his strange connections in Putin’s Russia.

Also unexamined are allegations that Mandelson’s ‘best pal’ Jeffrey Epstein was running what has been called ‘the world’s largest honeytrap operation’ on behalf of Russian intelligence when he procured women for his network of associates.

Among more than three million recently released Epstein documents are 1,056 naming Putin and 9,629 referring to Moscow. Epstein appears to have secured audiences with the Russian president after his 2008 conviction for procuring a child for prostitution.

Starmer plainly doesn’t want an inquiry into Mandelson’s conduct and relationship with Epstein because he fears it will illuminate his utter irresponsibility in making such a man Britain’s top ambassador.

But he won’t be able to conceal the magnitude of what has gone on. The US Congress is pursuing its inquiry into Epstein, and our Cabinet Office will eventually release the so-called ‘Mandelson files’ which, though probably heavily redacted, will shed more light. The Metropolitan Police may produce something.

This is only the beginning. We are going to learn the true extent of Peter Mandelson’s infamy – and it won’t be good for either Keir Starmer or the Labour Party.