This first digital document drop about Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to appoint Lord Peter Mandelson as ambassador to Washington is interesting, but not explosive.
There are noteworthy nuggets, as we set out here, and the revelations about his payoff will be, to many, enraging.
They also reveal that the PM was warned by officials nine days before his appointment that Lord Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein posed a “reputational risk”.
Government, like any other institution, likes to present its public self as carefully packaged, shiny and ready for the shop window.
The administrative factory floor, from which those public-facing decisions emerge, is rarely exposed to such sunlight.
But it is with all this.
The central political argument here, where the prime minister and Lord Mandelson are at odds, is whether the former ambassador lied to Downing Street about the nature and extent of his friendship with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Yes he did, says Sir Keir. No I didn’t, says the peer.
But the 147 pages we have waded through do not verify either claim.
To be clear, they were never likely to as the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, Darren Jones, had warned last month that a “subset of this first tranche of documents is subject to an ongoing Metropolitan Police investigation. That includes correspondence between No. 10 and Lord Peter Mandelson, in which a number of follow-up questions were asked”.
It is these documents, ministers believe, that could verify their disputed claim that Lord Mandelson lied to them.
But the police, we’re told, reckon these papers could prejudice any legal proceedings that may follow the criminal investigation into Lord Mandelson and so they are not being published yet.
Lord Mandelson has repeatedly let it be known that he believes he has not acted criminally, did not act for personal gain and is co-operating with the police.
It is my understanding that Lord Mandelson remains of the view that he did not lie to the prime minister, does not recall being asked questions about Epstein face to face during vetting interviews and answered written questions about his contact with the sex offender after his conviction truthfully and fully.
So on this claim and counter-claim, we are none the wiser.
