Starmer and Mandelson face questions over missing messages as files reveal scope of ‘Lord Mandelson’s influence

The disappearing act that shook Westminster

On June 2nd, Keir Starmer’s office confirmed what many had suspected: the Prime Minister had used the “disappearing messages” function in his communications with a figure who has since been discredited as an Epstein-associate, a person Starmer gleefully appointed as US Ambassador despite objections from UK Security Vetting. The confirmation arrived not through ministerial statement, but through the dry language of departmental correspondence, buried within the latest installment of the Mandelson files released to Parliament.

But this revelation was merely the surface of a much deeper rot. The same batch of documents revealed that Lord Mandelson himself, the former Business Secretary whose meetings with the notorious predator raised fundamental questions about classified information being passed to a man now assessed as a likely Israeli intelligence asset, had refused a government request to hand over communications from his personal phone. An explanatory note attached to three heavy volumes stated plainly that the government has “no further recourse to search [his] personal devices.”

The pattern is unmistakable. Within the space of five days in October last year, two of Starmer’s most powerful aides reported their phones missing or stolen. Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Paymaster General and a man who moved Starmer’s amendment to the motion calling for an exemption to the Mandelson files on grounds of “national security or international relations,” reported his phone stolen on October 15th. Five days later, Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief of staff and the architect of the party’s electoral operation, followed suit.

When McSweeney appeared before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee on April 28th, he stated that text messages he had received from Mandelson would be included in the files. In one newly-released exchange, Mandelson confirms he is talking to McSweeney “a lot,” but further detail of their correspondence is notably missing from the public record.

The network of influence

What the Mandelson files have revealed is not simply a question of missing phones, but of a shadow government operating beyond democratic scrutiny. The newly-released exchanges paint a picture of a Labour leadership utterly dependent on the counsel of a man whom the files connect to the passing of classified information to a figure with deep ties to both Epstein and Israeli intelligence.

In one conversation with Pat McFadden, the Work and Pensions Minister whom Mandelson once described as “cautious” while calling McSweeney “a hard-driven street fighter,” the “Prince of Darkness” slams Starmer for backtracking “on his immigration speech, on welfare, now on Gaza.” The message adds: “This is what Morgan senses… advance / buckle / advance / buckle.”

McFadden was one of Mandelson’s deputies when Mandelson was passing classified government information to the notorious predator. His other deputy at the time was David Lammy, now Foreign Secretary, who received a handwritten letter from Mandelson promising he would “never regret” appointing him as US Ambassador.

The network extends further. Peter Kyle, another Labour figure, thanks Mandelson in another newly-released exchange for “v good advice” regarding the use of “more positive language about AI,” which he promises to “action.”

McFadden is a former vice-chair of Labour Friends of Israel. Thomas-Symonds has received over £35,000 in donations from Labour Together. Both men have insisted there is “no leadership challenge” to the Prime Minister, though Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting may beg to differ.

The democratic deficit

The public deserves to know who is actually governing them. What these files reveal is a Labour administration whose most significant decisions, including the appointment of a figure with Jeffrey Epstein’s endorsement to a position of tremendous diplomatic power, may have been influenced by a man whose communications with that very figure are now beyond parliamentary reach.

The excuse of “national security” has been deployed to redact vast swathes of the Mandelson files. But the pattern of missing phones, the refusal to hand over personal devices, and the escalating revelations about the scope of Mandelson’s influence tell their own story. Every disappeared message is a thread pulled from the fabric of democratic accountability.

The British public are not owed explanations. They are owed transparency. And right now, they are getting neither, only the ever-more-palpable sense that power in this country operates through channels it is determined to keep hidden from the people it ostensibly serves.