Some political figures appear untouchable: Scandals splash around them, yet they always seem to slip through unscathed. That was long the case for Conservative prime minister Boris Johnson (2019-2022), who racked up gaffes and questionable associations before the “Partygate” scandal – illegal parties held at 10 Downing Street during the Covid-19 pandemic – finally brought him down.

Peter Mandelson, 72, also showed contempt for morality and common social rules. This key figure in the Labour Party, a former minister under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, former European commissioner for trade, and former United Kingdom ambassador to the United States, survived every disgrace. But his long-standing friendship with the American sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died in 2019, now appears to mark the end of the career of this tactician fascinated by fame and money.

Messages extracted from the millions of documents released by the US Department of Justice on January 30 revealed that the two men had a much closer relationship than the Briton has ever admitted. In the wake of the revelations from the release of millions of Epstein documents, Mandelson, who had already been dismissed from his post as ambassador to the US in September 2025, left the Labour Party, of which he had been a member for over 50 years, on February 1. Three days later, he resigned from the House of Lords as Scotland Yard announced the opening of an investigation, suspecting Mandelson of having shared confidential pieces of information with his friend Epstein while he served as a minister in the Brown government.

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