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It's a scandal that won't go away. A Telegraph exclusive shows that Peter Mandelson was texting cabinet ministers with unsolicited advice while he was US ambassador. And what's more, Labour ministers have attempted to conceal their messages with Mandlesson and refused to disclose them? Could judgment in bring this man back be any worse? Mandlesson in ways like a drug addict, completely addicted to power. uh he even wrote to me when I was business secretary saying you're not the sort of person who would put narrow party political considerations to the forefront of your mind you would think more broadly so it was very well constructed letter he's clever he's manipulative he knows how to deal with people I don't think we should be
surprised I think what be really interesting to find out is how government ministers responded what they did in reaction to this welcome Tony lovely to see Tony's not wearing a tie do you agree with this. Jacob, he's the political editor of the Telegraph. He's obviously hot. You're still in your double- breasted suit. Is this a problem? Tony is senior enough and wise enough to make this decision for himself. But unlike me, that is so conservative. Autonomy. Make your choices for yourself.
Unlike me, he's clearly better constructed because his head is remaining on. And as I explained to you the other day, I think mine would fall off with ice tie. That's why I don't risk it. Your head is on, your tortoise shell glasses are on. You're looking ser this is Perry White style journalism that you've come up with Tony D because you first of all revealed that Peter Mandelson while he was US ambassador note that everyone he was just US ambassador he wasn't a government minister was throwing a lot of weight around tell us everything well I should say first that next week we're going to get the second batch of the Mandlesson files we've only had one so far and the next one is the big one
it's the one that contains all the WhatsApp messages between ministers and officials and Mandlesson so should reveal what he was doing, who he was talking to, where his influence spread within the government. Uh, and what we revealed this morning is that he was offering a lot of unsolicited advice to ministers about how they should be going about doing their jobs. Uh, and people that we've spoken to say, well, I don't don't mean this by any offense, Jacob, but they say politicians of a certain age who've been around for a while feel that they should start getting involved in what other people are doing. Start being a sort of consultant political strategist. And so although he
was really only dealing with the US and his role as ambassador, he was texting other ministers and saying, "Oh, I've seen what you're doing on this. Perhaps you ought to think about doing it like that instead." And it sounds like this wasn't really advice that anyone was asking for. Who does he think he is? What's your reaction to this? Well, I think he was entitled to do it, that you are allowed to write to ministers. He was a member of the House of Lords. He was an ambassador. But dare I say that ministers get an awful lot of unsolicited advice and they send polite replies to people saying thanks so much thinking very carefully about what you've had to say when they haven't bothered with it at all. And the further
away people get from having been government ministers the less seriously these missives are taken. I mean it's a slight problem because occasionally very wise people send in very good thoughts but ministers are just too busy to bother with the ramblings of former ministers. But I mean it speaks to a degree of arrogance on Mandlesson's behalf. This is a man who has twice had to leave scared. I mean that arrogance Mandlesson in arrogant shock. I get that. But it's where's the humility? You've actually had to leave government twice in disgrace. You've been given this extraordinary reprieve that at the time Tony you, me, others on the Telegraph wrote reams and reams about his very well-known associations with
Epstein. This guy has been nicknamed the prince of darkness. He is a controversial character. With that all that in mind, I think you would be going into that role very grateful that you've been given some kind of opportunity for renaissance, but very careful that you're not, you know, overstating your own presence in Star's. I What does it say about Star? What's Stalmer thinking in letting this guy run rampant through Downing Street? Well, I think it's worth saying that Mandlesson was brought in during Labour's successful election campaign as a kind of strategist. You know, he's always been operating on the fringes, offering piece pieces of advice here and there.
Um, obviously now in light of what we know about him and his relationship with Epstein and the way that the vetting process, you know, all of these stories that we've been through endlessly, that advice starts to look slightly different. It starts to look like someone trying to meddle uh and trying to stick his ore in where it's not wanted. Uh, and there's been a huge amount of interest in what exactly is in these messages and what they're going to show about the way that the government was operating when Manderson was there. And I think the fact that he is trying to offer advice to people outside of his beat um is interesting. I think it gets at the idea of who the man is, the way that he operates, uh, and the
kind of character of him which has been endlessly trolled over. But of course, we look at it slightly differently now. We know what's happened. Mandlesson in a way is like a drug addict, completely addicted to power. uh he even wrote to me when I was business secretary and he's no fool. So instead of sending me a WhatsApp message or an email, he sent me a handwritten letter and if I remember rightly there was some post that was going to be available that was in the government's gift and he wrote a very flattering letter saying you're not the sort of person who would put narrow party political
considerations to the forefront of your mind. You would think more broadly. So it was very well constructed letter. Uh, and I sent him a handwritten reply of a thank you for your letter kind. But he's he's clever. He's manipulative. He knows how to deal with people. I don't think we should be surprised. I think what would be really interesting to find out is how government ministers responded, what they did in reaction to this and whether he was having a real influence because he does have that vengali capacity within the Labour party or did have. Well, that brings us on to Tony's second scoop because government ministers did reply and many were in communication with Peter Mandlesson, but
you found out that they've tried to keep those messages secret. That's right. I mean, this is an extraordinarily complex process. The Cabinet Office has been trying to deal with the Mandlesson files now for since February, trying to get all this stuff out. Um but what we don't know really is how exactly those communications between the cabinet office and ministers have gone as they try and gather up all this material that's ultimately going to be released. Uh and our story today shows that the cabinet office actually had to send two requests to ministers to ask for their communications with Mandlesson. The first one simply said please can you send your messages with Mandlesson uh that work related and uh
we will go through them and look at them for the humble address. But in fact that wasn't what the humble address says. It's not what parliament has demanded. Parliament has demanded to see all the communications between ministers and manson, not just the ones that are about their ministerial jobs. Uh but the people that I've spoken to involved in this process say the fact that there was a small caveat in what cabin initially asked for meant that there was some wiggle room for ministers. They were able to say, "Oh well, this conversation I was having
with him that wasn't really work related. It wasn't strictly related to a piece of ministerial work that I was doing. We were just having a chat." Um and so the cabinet was quite surprised to receive back from a load of ministers who've got well-known connections to Lord Mandlesson a line that simply said, "Yeah, I haven't got anything for you." We didn't have any conversations. I'm thinking of Wes Streeting here who was once his protetéé. I mean, I don't know who else would have had series of communications. Judging by what you've said, very many of them would at least have been contacted by the guy if that's
how he operates. Well, I think it's worth saying that Wes Streeting voluntarily published all of his own messages with Mandlesson before the request even went out to sort of flush it all out there. But Wes Streeting's messages looked as if they'd been written for publication. That there was one where he set out his opposition to government policy on recognizing a state of Palestine which looked as if it was there of his leadership campaign whenever it came. So, I was a bit suspicious about the streeting messages. Weren't you? Well, I think what will be interesting to is to compare the official release that comes next week with what we got from his team uh a few months ago.
Do we think any messages were lost in this process that inadvertently deleted or anything of that kind? Well, the problem with it is that we're basically relying on these ministers to come clean about what they had. And I think that's why this story is important because it shows that if there is a little bit of wiggle room, the ministers will take it because it's embarrassing to have their messages put out there. Uh and there are ways of course that you can get rid of your WhatsApps. You can simply delete all of them if you want to or you can many of them have got the disappearing messages feature enabled on WhatsApp which means the messages are automatically deleted and become unreoverable.
Yeah, I do. I've got a 90-day automatic delete on messages um because I discovered at one point my telephone wasn't working because WhatsApp was taking up all the memory and Okay, so it's a memory thing. Some people got a new telephone so I no longer need it but it's there and I have telephone one of those jobs. That's right. Operator. But do you think some politicians have disappearing messages because they don't want to keep the receipts? Oh, I'm sure they do. Yes. I mean I find that extraordinary. I think if you're in public service and you're an elected representative, it's a bit like being a journalist. You have to keep your notebooks for the last seven
years just in case you're the subject of an Ipso or a legal complaint. Why should ministers be able to have disappearing messages? This is really interesting because in the city traders had to have their mobiles recordable as well as their landlines because as people moved more and more to mobile communications, it was very easy to get around the recording requirements by using a mobile. And therefore the FCA added a regulation that if you were doing anything that was trading, your mobile had to be recorded as well.
Whereas with ministers, if you go back 30 years, there was a civil servant sitting in on the call who would take a note. Now all these things are done without any record of them. And that's a big gap in record and we saw it with our own lockdown files. Okay, this idea of government by WhatsApp, but if it is government by WhatsApp, there should be transparency to that process. Well, and in theory there is in theory the same rules apply and that advisers and ministers should hand over their WhatsApps periodically or they anything that's discussed that's an official matter of government policy should be recorded by the civil service.
They should be updated about it later to create a minute. But in reality, of course, never asked for that. Never ever asked for WhatsApp. No, nobody asked for my WhatsApp. When there were leak inquiries, people asked to look at my telephone. But I was never would think that you poor people would be at the subject of a leak inquiry. I would never leak anything that was actually secret. No, I know. I tried many times to get information out. I'd speak to you about the terrors of lockdown, which I didn't like, but that was opinion rather than No, you gave me opinions, but No, of
course you didn't. Tony Diver, we'll let you get back to your desk, your keyboard, and your pen and your notebook because you're coming out with some great scoops which we will link in the show notes. So, they're all over the Telegraph website. Well done you. Thanks. Thanks for having me on. Good. Nice to see you. If you're enjoying our journalism, why not sign up to From the Editor, our free email newsletter. Start your day with the latest news and opinion, plus our bite-size puzzles. Scan the QR code to sign up free today.
