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Britain’s new ambassador to Washington Peter Mandelson has reacted with a foul-mouth rant when pressed about his friendship with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
The New Labour grandee additionally accused others of getting an “obsession” along with his relationship with the disgraced financier and convicted intercourse trafficker.
Lord Mandelson has come underneath intense stress within the function even earlier than he crossed the Atlantic to take up the job.
The Independent revealed final month that Trump was contemplating rejecting Lord Mandelson’s nomination, in what would have been a significant diplomatic headache for Sir Keir Starmer.
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The Labour grandee known as the US president a ‘danger to the world’ a number of years in the past (Andrew Milligan/PA) (PA Wire)
The peer’s previous has come underneath scrutiny, together with his friendship with Epstein who died in jail in 2019.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Lord Mandelson stated: “I regret ever meeting him or being introduced to him by his partner Ghislaine Maxwell. I regret even more the hurt he caused to many young women.”
He went on so as to add: “I’m not going to go into this. It’s an FT obsession and frankly you can all f*** off. OK?”
Ms Maxwell is at present behind bars for recruiting and trafficking underage ladies for Epstein.
An inner JPMorgan report from 2019, filed to a New York court docket in 2023, stated that “Jeffrey Epstein appears to maintain a particularly close relationship with Prince Andrew the Duke of York and Lord Peter Mandelson, a senior member of the British government”, the paper reported.
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Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of luring younger ladies to therapeutic massage rooms for Jeffrey Epstein to molest (US Department of Justice/PA) (PA Media)
In the interview, the previous Labour cupboard minister additionally insisted he would deal nicely with the Trump staff as a result of they’d discover out he was not an extremely -liberal “wokey-cokey” variety.
He stated: “Some around Mr. Trump see me as they view many in Europe. They see me as a leftwing progressive, somebody who might even be anti-business or somebody who might be following the sort of liberalism they’ve just defeated in America. What they will discover is I’m not an uber-liberal, I’m not a wokey-cokey sort of person, and I’m pro-market and pro-business.”
He additionally revealed that George W. Bush calls him “silvertongue” for his negotiating powers.
His outburst over Epstein comes every week after Lord Mandelson claimed that President Trump had received “fresh respect” as he sought to disown his earlier criticisms, regardless of describing him as a “danger to the world” in 2019.
But hours after it emerged that President Trump had authorised his appointment, he informed Fox News: “I consider my remarks about President Trump as ill-judged and wrong. I think that times and attitudes toward the president have changed.”
Referring to his second election as president, Lord Mandelson stated: “I think that he has won fresh respect. He certainly has from me, and that is going to be the basis of all the work I do as His Majesty’s ambassador in the United States.”
He added that with the numerous threats and challenges the world faces, it takes “courage, somebody, sometimes, who’s prepared to be argumentative and, indeed, disruptive, not just take business as usual”.
“Frankly, I think President Trump could become one of the most consequential American presidents I have known in my adult life,” he added.
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