Former British Ambassador to the United States and former European Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson has left the ruling Labour Party over his links to the scandalous American financier Jeffrey Epstein.
“I do not want to cause further embarrassment to the Labour Party and therefore I am resigning from it“, the 72-year-old member of the House of Lords, the upper house of the British parliament, wrote in a letter to the party's secretary general Holly Ridley, Sky News reported.
On January 30, the US Department of Justice announced that it had published all the documents from the Epstein file. According to British media reports, one of them contains information that Mandelson received $75,000 from the financier. Mandelson himself stressed in his statement that "there is no record or recollection of ever receiving these sums".
In September 2025, the publication of some documents from the Epstein file led to Mandelson's resignation as ambassador to the United States. Published excerpts from an album prepared for Epstein's 50th birthday contain letters and photographs from Mandelson. In them, the ambassador appears in a dressing gown and calls Epstein, who was convicted of child prostitution and later committed suicide, his "best friend".
Mandelson became the British ambassador to the United States in February 2025. He is considered one of the most influential members of the ruling Labour Party. Mandelson served in the House of Commons (lower house) of the British Parliament from 1992 to 2004 and as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in Tony Blair's government (1999–2001). He then served as European Commissioner for Trade (2004–2008) and Secretary of State for Business and Commerce in Gordon Brown's cabinet (2008–2010). In 2008, Mandelson was elected to the House of Lords.