Critics call him the “Prince of Darkness”, his autobiography is “The Third Man”, but now Peter Mandelson is very much in the spotlight as the new UK ambassador to the US.
The architect of New Labour, former MP for Hartlepool, cabinet minister, and EU trade commissioner, was finally sworn in as Britain’s top diplomat in Washington on Monday, marking his latest reincarnation in a “remarkable career of triumphs, mishaps, resignations and comebacks”, said the Financial Times (FT).
‘Silvertongue’
In a recent in-depth interview with the paper, the 71-year-old revealed former US president George W. Bush’s nickname for him was “silvertongue”. That “is probably just as well,” said the FT’s George Parker, “given that Mandelson has just been assigned to the most daunting job in British diplomacy”, tasked with “keeping alive Churchill’s mystical ‘special relationship’ in the era of Donald Trump“.
It is “rare for a politician, rather than a career civil servant, to be given a key UK ambassadorial post”, said AP News, with Mandelson the first political appointee in 50 years to hold the role of Britain’s top diplomat in Washington.
Aside from once calling the current US president a “danger to the world” – words he now says were “ill-judged and wrong” – as a progressive internationalist he is “not an obvious emissary to the Trump administration”. But some analysts see Mandelson as a “canny choice”, a “controversial figure who twice resigned from government over allegations of financial or ethical impropriety, he has – like Trump – repeatedly bounced back”.
One of Britain’s “most admired and loathed political operators”, he has been picked by Keir Starmer in the face of considerable opposition on both sides of the Atlantic, for his “guile, expertise in world affairs and trade issues, and networking skills”, said Parker.
“His mission is to get in with the US president and stay there.”
‘Dividing Trumpworld into three’
Mandelson’s “diplomatic strategy so far involves dividing Trumpworld into three groups and approaching them in different ways”, said BBC political correspondent Joe Pike.
“Ideological MAGA (Trump’s campaign mantra Make America Great Again)” include protectionists like former White House advisor Steve Bannon who want a return to the America First strategy of Trump’s first term and “may be the trickiest to mollify”.
“National security MAGA” should be more receptive to a foreign policy hawk such as Mandelson, while he already has close contacts with the third group, “the technocracy”, having built relationships with the likes of Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and even holidaying with new Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
It is important to remember that Trump values the small group of “very wealthy businessmen” he has assembled around himself above that of Washington political insiders, former UK ambassador to the US, Sir Kim Darroch, told Politico.
“The theory goes that if you can influence the billionaires, you can influence Trump,” said the news site, something Mandelson, with his extensive contact book, should be ideally suited to.
Aside from being a “considerable political talent” with economic and foreign policy expertise, he is “also very comfortable with very rich people“, Jill Rutter, a senior fellow at the Institute for Government, told AP News.
Perhaps more than with any other administration, this skill – along with the ability to deploy the royal family – will be more crucial than ever in securing favourable terms for Britain over the next four years.