Peter Mandelson has declined to apologise to Jeffrey Epstein’s victims for maintaining a friendship with the convicted child sex offender, suggesting that as a gay man he was unaware of the financier’s sex life. In his first broadcast interview since being sacked as UK ambassador to the US, the Labour peer told the BBC he paid a “calamitous” price for his association with an “evil monster”.
Mandelson was removed from his diplomatic post in September after Downing Street said it had not been aware of emails in which he suggested Epstein’s 2008 conviction for soliciting a child for prostitution was wrongful and should be challenged. Epstein had pleaded guilty and served time, but Mandelson said he believed his excuses out of “misplaced loyalty” and described it as “a most terrible mistake on my part”.
In the interview, Mandelson sought to distance himself from Epstein, saying he was “at the edge of this man’s life” despite “toe-curlingly embarrassing” emails showing support and a birthday message calling Epstein his “best pal”. He added: “I never saw anything in his life when I was with him, when I was in his homes, that would give me any reason to suspect what this evil monster was doing in preying on these young women.”
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said Mandelson should have apologised, calling his actions “at best deep naivety”. Labour peer Ayesha Hazarika said she was “disappointed with the BBC” for the interview, which she described as a “slap in the face to Epstein victims”. Mandelson, when pressed, said he wanted to apologise to the women “for a system that refused to hear their voices”, but not for his friendship, adding: “If I had known, if I was in any way complicit or culpable, of course I would apologise … but I was not culpable, I was not knowledgeable for what he was doing.”
Mandelson accepted his sacking, saying: “I understand why I was sacked … I’m not going to seek to reopen or relitigate this issue. I’m moving on.” The controversy was reignited after Democratic members of the US House Oversight Committee released Epstein’s 50th “birthday book”, in which Mandelson wrote: “I think the world of you … Everything can be turned into an opportunity and that you will come through it and be stronger for it.”
