Mandelson private messages to be released today – UK politics live

Good morning. Many people despair at the quality of governance in Britain at the moment, but in one respect we are living through a golden age; if you are interested in contemporary history, and learning about what actually happens at the heart of government, then you can now – sometimes – access the sort of information never available before. Today the government is publishing a mass of information – apparently running to three volumes, and more than 1,000 pages – containing the private messages Peter Mandelson exchanged with government ministers and officials when he was ambassador to the US, and before his appointment. Last month a minister compared this to the evidence released as part of the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war. But the Chilcot inquiry took place in the era before WhatsApp, and it was publishing secret memos – intended for circulation within Whitehall. WhatsApp messages are a lot more personal; reading them is like being able to eavesdrop on a private conversation. Mandelson is a man with spiky, controversial views, who loves gossip and plotting, and whose private views don’t always accord with what he has said in public. It should be fascinating. These documents are being published because the government has to comply with a humble address – a Commons vote mandating ministers to release information – tabled by the Conservative party. Several humble addresses have been passed in recent years (since this ancient parliamentary mechanism, which had been forgotten about for decades, was revived during the Brexit wars by the Labour Brexit spokesperson, a certain Keir Starmer) but none of them have been as far-reaching as this one. The Conservatives tabled the humble address because they wanted to learn more about how Mandelson came to be appointed ambassador to the US despite the fact that it was known at the time that he had maintained a friendship with Jeffrey Epstein even after he was first convicted for child sex offences. As Kiran Stacey, Henry Dyer and Pippa Crerar report, the documents out today will imply that the Foreign Office did not seem particulary bothered about ensuring that the supposed “mitigations” in place to manage the risks associated with Mandelson being appointed amounted to very much. Mandelson files show no mitigation of security concerns over US appointment Read more But, on the broader question of why Mandelson was appointed, we are unlikely to learn much because it is already obvious why he got the job: he wanted it, he was close to Morgan McSweeney, the PM’s chief of staff who had more influence over what Starmer did than anyone else, and McSweeney and Starmer were both persuaded that Mandelson’s fondness for dodgy billionaires would enable him to form a good relationship with Donald Trump (even though this argument was inherently flawed, because the Trump administration did not want him). Instead, the main revelations this afternoon are likely to focus on what members of the government have been saying