After being sacked for his sustained relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Mandelson has said being booted from the US felt ‘like being killed without actually dying’
Peter Mandelson has described his sacking as the UK’s ambassador to the US to be like a “drive-by shooting.” He added the ordeal left him feeling like he had been “killed” but “without actually dying.”
In an interview with the Times Magazine, Mandelson pulled back the lid on his relationship with the late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Mandelson has recounted being strewn out of Washington after his former relationship with Epstein came to light.
He said: “I was at the edge of something. Suddenly, I was put at the centre of it – as a result of historical emails of which I have no memory and no record.” Mandelson stated after receiving the call from Downing Street, he and his partner Reinaldo Avila da Silva were told to be “out of that residence in a week, with everything packed up and removed”.
Mandelson said: “It felt like being killed without actually dying,” and dubbed the scandal as a “life-changing crisis.” The former Labour minister has claimed Epstein told him he had been framed for his previous conviction.
He said: “[Epstein] told me he had been framed in his indictment in 2008 and I feel really bad about continuing my association with him afterwards.
“That’s why I wanted to apologise unequivocally for doing so, to the women and girls who suffered.” Mandelson has distanced himself from Epstein and has called him a master manipulator despite their past friendship.
Mandelson claimed: “It’s difficult for people to make that distinction because in most people’s minds there’s one Epstein, one flow of information. They didn’t know him. But like everyone else, I learnt the truth about him after his [2019] death, not in the early Noughties. He was a master manipulator. I can see that now. But the point is that his victims certainly did know what he was doing.”
Mandelson has also criticised Starmer’s leadership and has grilled the numerous U-turns from the Labour government. He said: “The U-turns are becoming a really bad look, and if the prime minister picks a fight or shows leadership on something, he has to follow through and win the argument.”
The disgraced Labour MP and acquaintance of Epstein also claimed the Prime Minister was making a “valid point” during his controversial “an island of strangers” speech. On the speech Mandelson said: “He was making a valid point and, as prime minister, I think he was right to talk about these things rather than be silenced”.