Britain + The Epstein Files: Peter Mandelson (Pt 1) - Dan Neidle

What's left? Emergency episode by popular demand. We are here to discuss the Epstein files with the one and only tax lawyer by day, breaking stories, investigative journalist by night, Dan Needle. Welcome to the show, Dan. How are you doing?

>> I'm good. Good to be back.

>> So, Dan, you're going to have to start us off at the beginning. How the hell have you got involved in this story breaking what's been going on between Peter Mandleson, the former US ambassador and his relationship with the disgraced financier pedophile Jeffrey Epstein?

>> Yeah, it's a bit confusing and it completely wrecked my timetable for this month. I was supposed to be doing lots of work about hidden owners of offshore property and suddenly my timetable's blown out the water because I have the attention span of a gnat and it's all my fault. Um, it started because someone who used to be a friend but now isn't sent me an email saying I should look at this Guardian article about about Epstein and Mandleson where there's this gift from Epstein to Mandleson's partner and everyone knows this now and Epstein says oh it has to be a loan for gift per gift tax purposes and this friend who's caused me to lose probably one or two weeks of my life um said oh what do you think about that and I looked at that I Hang on, that that's quite aggressive US tax avoidance. I wonder if that might actually be a criminal offense committed by Epstein and maybe Mandleson's aiding and abetting him. So I spent a few hours speaking to US tax people. And the answer is very American. It's yeah, it's definitely tax avoidance. Um, yeah, it's in theory it's criminal, but everyone does it, so no one's ever prosecuted.

>> So it started as it always does with you with tax law. Were you?

>> Started started with tax and and then I thought well maybe maybe I can find more on this and I started digging around and I was amazed by some of the [ __ ] I found and I mean I was in 2009 can I kind of do do a rewind maybe you could do a sound effect or something 2009 um it was an extraordinary time so so the banks started failing Lehman went under in August 2008 2009 the banks were mostly but not entirely done failing What was happening was that the financial crisis was becoming a crisis for everyone else. The governments had bailed out the banks, meaning the governments were in dire financial straits. At the same time, the banks were still in dire straits, so weren't lending. So, the businesses that need the money were getting into difficulty and everything was seizing up and there was a huge popular anger at the banks, um, my clients at the time. And so I it's a time that's that's for for memorable work because it was a it was a terrible terrifying time and I remember it very clearly. When I started looking at these emails I think I I could maybe see more than some journalists what they meant because I'd kind of lived there. So, so when I saw an email that that was Mandleson talking to Epstein about speaking to the chancellor, I knew it was about the bank bonus tax.

>> And that's this extraordinary thing that the British government was imposing a tax on bank bonuses, which was a I think it was a poorly designed tax in some ways let the banks off the hook, but never mind. It was a it was a very popular thing to do and of course the banks were lobbying against it. Of course they were. Mandleson was business secretary in the cabinet. You kind of expect him to be lobbied by banks, but here he was working with Epstein and through Epstein, JP Morgan behind the scenes. And it was at the point where Epstein asked him, should the CEO of JP Morgan, Jamie Diamond, call the chancellor and Mandleson said yes and mildly threatened him. So the the British business secretary was advising a foreign bank to threaten the British government to undo government policy. Just extraordinary. And so that's my tax excuse for being into it. And then I kind of can't stop. I anyone listening to this who doesn't have anything important to do in the next hour, have a look at the HTM files. Type a word for someone connected. Keep typing. Keep searching. It's the world's most infuriating useless search engine, but that kind of keeps you at it like a particularly stupid computer game and you just can't resist and there's so many branches and that that's all I and a a bunch of people I've been working with have been doing.

>> So, if we focus specifically on 2009, I mean, you remember the time you were also of course a Labour person as well. You know, you have a background in uh working with the Labour Party as an activist, as a supporter of the party. Were you someone who was in favor of that banker's bonus tax?

>> So, I mean, as a as a lawyer, I I probably had about three different positions. So, so my bank clients were you you'll be surprised to hear were not in favor of the tax and some of them even considered suing to try and block it, although I think they ended up realizing that regardless of the legality that would be a politically incredibly stupid thing to do and and they didn't do that. Um, I thought it was a poorly designed tax because the way it worked, it taxed bonuses for the next seven months only. So, duh, the banks paid some bonuses at a different time. And yeah, so I I I thought there were better ways to tax the banks than this. So, I guess I I I was against it in a slightly annoying way.

>> I guess more for kind of nuance. How do you see the tax having been applied if it were successful in the way that you're talking about? What kind of revenue could that have raised for the British state to do the things that I guess people like us on the left want to see?

>> Part of the problem was that the tax had two purposes. Purpose one, raise money. They wanted to raise £550 million. Purpose two, change behavior and to discourage bonuses. When you do a tax with two purposes, you generally end up only getting one of them. And here the problem was that the banks were operating in a competitive market. They were competing against banks in other countries. They were competing against say hedge funds and non-banks in the UK. So they felt they had to pay bonuses anyway. The tax was a policy failure. The bonuses continued. But a financial success. It raised two and a half billion quid. So five times was what was expected. Um, what you could have done there was an ideal which was very popular in tax nerd circles at the time of something called a financial activities tax and that said we tax banks on their profit but really banks are funny things because the profits are really shared between some highly paid employees and the shareholders. In fact the shareholders often don't do that well. It's the it's the bankers who are doing well. So we need a tax which taxes financial activities and looks at all of the profit not just on banks but everyone in the financial sector and something like that I think would have been a big success but maybe it was too hard to politically sell maybe the lobbying pushed it away don't know.

>> Wasn't there also Dan a third reason which was that it felt as the Labour government at the time post financial crash that bankers should bear some responsibility for the crunch as much as everyone else and that despite the kind of machinations of Peter Mandleson who on the face of it was working in a treacherous way against our own government and our own interests that Alistair Darling the then chancellor stood steadfast he didn't cave to these demands and he he pushed through with a Labour policy and the Labour agenda at that time and and really actually he should be given credit for that.

>> Yeah, I think most accounts maybe all accounts of financial crisis paint Darling very well. And after Mandleson suggested to Jamie Diamond he he he he should threaten the chancellor, that's what Diamond did. If you read Alistair Darling's biography, um I think it's called Back from the Brink. You'll see he talks about that phone call and how he had a very aggressive call from from Jamie Diamond threatening to sell um JPM's holdings of UK gilts, which Darling says, and I you know, I believe this. He says he rather mildly said, "But you you don't hold these as a favor. you hold them because you get a return on them." And JP Morgan was saying they'd uh maybe scale back their plans to have a new headquarters in London to adjust. Darling said, "But you got all these people in London. You you've got to put them somewhere. It's not very not very practical." So Darling rather shrugged it off. And yeah, they the government went ahead with the policy. I think more than that, I mean, Darling apparently was so accustomed to these calls of coercion from different big banker bosses saying that they were going to pull money out of the UK or they were going to sell off UK bonds that he ended up reciting back to these people their very same scripts that they were reading out to him to pressure the chancellor at the time. Fiser Islam, the BBC political correspondent. He's got a whole tweet about this today about how it was a very kind of perplexing conversation he used to have with Darling about this kind of experience that he had in 2009. The reason I'm bringing this up is because to many on the left, on the progressive left, the Labour Party should not be in conversation or in concert with these types of people. we shouldn't be being influenced by big money and that the political, you know, posturing, the policies that we make should fundamentally be about servicing the electorate.

>> Well, I sorry, I think for any government, it is inappropriate for a cabinet minister to have email chats with um Wall Street financiers. Uh, yeah, as business secretary, you're going to be lobbied by bankers. That should happen in an environment with civil servants all properly minuted. Let it should be entered in the lobbyists register. We the people should be able to see what's going on. Yeah. Absolutely. So you could still have inappropriate lobbying there. But what Mandleson did was several steps beyond that. Inappropriate I think for any government minister. For a Labour Party minister, yeah, it's seems even more inappropriate.

>> This is something that's obviously recently come out as of this week, but what do you think are the knock-on consequences in terms of our own political culture and then how we engage with business and for business secretaries today, but also of the future? How should they react and respond to this type of coercion that I'm sure will form another aspect of our politics going forward?

>> It's a really good question. I I don't know the answer. I think there's one there's one response to all of the Mandleson thing which you see particularly on social media which is yeah surprise surprise they're all at it happens all the time Mandleson's just been caught. I think that's dead wrong and I think it it lets Mandleson off the hook if he ever finds himself in court for this and I hope he will maybe we can talk about that later um he could say well yeah I was just doing what everyone else does bollocks they yeah I I would bet all the books behind me that no other minister in a recent Labour or Conservative government has done or would do anything like this. And when you hear other advisers in interview being asked, they're asked what they think about this and they're they're shocked and they feel betrayed that this was not normal. So I I don't know if there's a a direct change that needs to be made to stop this happening. Um maybe there's little things like here's a mystery. So Mandleson would habitually forward emails he got from government often quite sensitive ones and forward them to Epstein. One case it looks like he did it 4 seconds after getting that email. How did he do that? I mean he he did it on his Blackberry. So was the civil service stupid enough to give him a Blackberry that had on one phone his business and his personal email? Really? But I spoke to someone very senior today who was around at the time that they couldn't understand how he was able to do that and how that was permitted. They also couldn't understand how he was permitted to stay at Epstein's house when he went to when he went to New York.

>> Well, this was after his conviction, right?

>> Oh, yes. Sorry. Uh I'm doing the tax law thing of of omitting the sort of big cracking great human catastrophe in the background. Yeah. All of this is after his conviction for for for um for essentially sex trafficking. But even if it wasn't even if it was my house in New York, a minister should not just be able to check in to my house in in New York. Who am I? What what listening devices have been placed there? The civil service should be all over this. They don't appear to have been. I think it's quite striking that not only was Mandleson sending, you know, uh, these messages 4 seconds after he received emails, sensitive emails right from the heart of government in emails that should have never been passed on to anyone without the security clearance or the vetting involved. But that it continued on for such a long time and even in other email threads, the way in which Epstein's correspondence with other people invoke Peter, should we involve Peter in these discussions? They're such kind of quotidian off-the-cuff remarks that it makes him seem like a central part of Epstein's machine.

>> Yeah. They they talk to him like he's their in-house lawyer. You know, when when I was a lawyer, I expect Kyle was going to behave. Should we should we bring in Needle? Um no, no, no, no, not at this time. Um and that's how they describe Mandleson. There was a city deal and someone wanted help with the city deal. And um Epstein said to some business lawyer whose background I entirely understand who was also tight with the Duke and Duchess of York. He said he said to this guy shall we bring in Mandleson? And the guy responds um not at this stage. He didn't respond what how what how can we bring the business secretary? How do you know him? Just said not at this stage implying that they had a common understanding as to what Mandleson's role was here.

>> And I think that goes to potentially some of the judgment conversations that we're having today around the modern Labour Party and the current prime minister for putting the likes of Mandleson in one of the most powerful and top positions in government as the ambassador to the United States. There was clearly a lack of judgment back then, but it seems that there's even more so a judgment uh a lack of judgment today. Do you think that's the case? Because I think this is a conversation that will be constantly.

>> Are you trying to drag me into a political question, an apolitical lawyer?

>> Well, it's it's it's your judgment to make a call on the judgment.

>> I'm not going to if you don't mind. I I I'm going to duck that one.

>> That's not that's not a problem. I I I think everyone I I have no special insight or expertise here. Everyone else can form their own their own view on that.

>> But it's an ongoing conversation I suppose in terms of.

>> I will answer it.

>> Interesting question is what did the prime minister know because when someone's appointed you normally expect that there will be a sort of briefing a background check on them and someone would have looked at that. Who looked at it and what did it say?

>> Well, at that time that Mandleson was appointed US ambassador, it was later revealed that there had been concerns raised about his security clearance and his vetting. So, there was ostensibly information at the time suggesting that this was going to be compromising for Mandleson to use one specific adjective. But I it feels as if what the thinking was at the time was that Mandleson was going to have some level of rapport with MAGA, Trump, the teams around uh the American administration that would give the UK some sort of edge, right? Like we if we go back a year a year ago, the concern was what would a UK US trade deal look like with the kind of tariffs were on the horizon? They had been promised in the in the run-up to that election. What was the UK's position going to be post liberation day? You know, ostensibly on those two fronts, Mandleson delivered. I mean, there were Times articles lionizing how great Mandleson's appointment was and his special touch with the Don himself. I mean, a lot of that now seems to be clearly the rationale if there was such a thought that hey look, you know, this guy has the inside track with these people. He understands the way they work and he has the relationships going back historically that makes him somebody that can be trusted and that seems to have all bitten the government in the ass right now.

>> I'm going to say yes and probably not get drawn too much in because I I try not to be a political commentator. There are so many political commentators. Some of them very good you guys. Some some of them absolutely [ __ ]. Um, and you the last thing the world needs is another political commentator. So, I try not to do it, tempted as I sometimes am, and I really try just to stick to areas where I feel I have expertise. Um.

>> Dad, we'll use you as a sounding board to just let our get our own theories out there into the ether. We've said our piece now. We don't need to politicize you anymore than you're already comfortable with.

>> Should we talk about Russia? Because people keep saying, "Oh, there's rationalizations with Epstein." I've spent more time than is strictly healthy looking at looking at the Epstein files. I'm not usually this pale. And I haven't seen a single mention of anything Russia suspicious in there. So, you know, Epstein was not someone who kept his mouth shut. He was gossiping constantly about everyone to everyone else. Was he really somehow in a hook with the Russians, but never betrayed that in the other emails? Or I guess the other the view would be, oh, the DOJ's censored it. Their redactions are [ __ ]. I mean, they you see in one email they redact Mandleson's name here and they forget to redact it here. It could even be done in an automated way by people who aren't very good at this and then not checked. So, seems most unlikely they were able to completely successfully redact Russia references. So, those are the theories. either there's Russian stuff in there but no one spotted it or Epstein was so disciplined he kept it out of anything in writing really or um it's been redacted and censored by the DOJ despite the fact the evidence is they're not very good at that. So I take the so far yeah way outside my warehouse but I'm going with the fourth theory that there wasn't a Russian link.

>> Well, it's interesting on the Russian front. I think there is definitely a vested interest in the UK at the moment trying to understand if there was ever any level of compromise. Would the Russians be involved as our great adversary? The things that I've seen so far have been a number of mentions of Epstein trying to talk about Putin. I believe that there was some mention with his correspondence with Ehud Barak who's the former Israeli president about relationships with the Russians. There's nothing to the level of Mandleson's involvement involving the Russians, but I think there is a thread to pull on there and we should, you know, if we're being as scrutinizing on on Mandleson, think really deeply about whether there could have ever been any alignment between uh the Russians and Epstein. But of course, we need to get to the bottom of that and see what what's that what's there at the moment.

>> It's all about evidence. Yeah. Everyone should go away, tap a few times, see what they find. Find something interesting, get in touch with me. I'd be delighted to hear it. Although I'm I tend not to do anything Russian because too scary. Speak to someone else. Not me. Someone else.

>> If we talk specifically about how Mandleson probably knew that this was coming, why do you think he was so keen to get back involved in the entire political game?

>> That's a good theory. Why Why didn't he realize this was coming out? Um, yeah. Um, maybe he thought Trump just wouldn't do it. Maybe he I mean I've met quite quite a few politicians and most of them are re really really in fact maybe all of them are really lovely people but I think all politicians have a streak of self-deception and overoptimism and that's what enables them to embark on such a stupid career which is going to leave them so desperately unhappy. Um, and perhaps that's it. That that he just fooled himself into thinking this was all history and would never come up.

>> You must have come across Peter Mandleson in your times around British politics down over the last 20, 30 years. I mean, he's almost everyone's got a photo with him now that doesn't look so great on a Twitter timeline. We're fortunate enough to have just started our careers, so I've never come across him personally. But um.

>> I met him very briefly in 1996 I guess when I was 23.

>> And that that's it. I don't have any good Peter Mandleson stories at all. But I heard him speak and I was surprised by how um how informal and how how [ __ ] and gossipy he was which was in contradistinction with his media image of being very controlled. And I guess I hadn't seen that before. That hardly classes an as an exclusive for you, though.

>> But he has that reputation, doesn't he? The the the prince of darkness. I mean, it doesn't got doesn't have a great ring to it right now as we're discussing his deep links with the world's most disgraced uh pedophile. But I mean, Mandleson made a name for himself, didn't he? About having understanding, a way of conniving, a way of using kind of underhand tactics to gain a political advantage. Is it just the case that anyone who's involved in that game is by necessity doing some pretty grubby stuff?

>> Okay, I don't think so. I think there's an image of politicians as incredibly clever, devious, sinister manipulators. And you know, they're they're not all clever. They're normal people. And most most of them are not like that at all. Um, some of them are. Some lawyers are like that. Some estate agents are like that. But I I don't think that's typical for politicians. There are certainly some with that reputation. Mandleson absolutely had that reputation. But I mean he's it would be interesting to read in a few years a really measured retrospective of what his contribution and cost actually was. But he's he's widely credited with being responsible for the Labour party's um partial recovery, beginning of recovery in the late 80s, throwing away the red flag, replacing it with the red rose. um conferences which were television rather than chaotic and the perception at the time and I remember it was that that did make a difference. Was that accurate? Don't know.

>> One thing I'm quite interested about is the fact that Emily Thornberry, chair of the foreign affairs select committee has come out kind of rampaging against um to appoint the government's decision but also the fact that Peter Mandleson was the ambassador to the United States. She says that the government basically undermined I'm using my own language here undermined the authority of the select committee in the ability to scrutinize Peter Mandleson in terms of our own constitution and political practice which I'm quite interested here. Do you think this then fortifies democratic accountability to the prime minister and to government where they can effectively scrutinize decisions and people who are put in particular places? Because I think what.

>> Are you asking me a political question again?

>> Well, I this kind of stuff can't be divorced from the politics and the judgment and the ideology at play here. So, I'm I'm curious what your views are on this.

>> Uh, I'd heard I heard her say that on Newsnight last night and I was initially sort of it puzzled. I still have a bit puzzle because we don't have a tradition of diplomats being questioned by by a select committee. Do we? I mean, it's an American thing. Maybe here she sees it as exceptional because Peter Mandleson was obviously not a civil servant and and he was appointed. But is that is it a tradition we have that people get grilled by select committees?

>> Is it something of a tradition that we should begin to embrace potentially after this?

>> Don't know. You see, I'm really bad at this. I should never be on the one hand this. On the one hand that I don't I I I really don't know. I mean, generally I'm in favor of democratic accountability, but select committees can devolve into partisan bickering on the one hand, showboating on the other. Is that really a way to get better appointments or would we just end up with more boring appointments? People people who can't be criticized. Don't know. Don't have a view.

>> Well, I guess my argument would be more boring appointments. At least we don't get people who are associated with uh notorious criminals who have done awful things. Surely that would strengthen the legitimacy of the House of Commons in being able to effective decision.

>> I'm going to be with you on on not appointing um friends of Peter Far to important.

>> Yes, exactly. That's very political. going to go on a take that political view. But.

>> I mean in in a more normal environment I think you want people who have said things that other people will disagree with and you want them in politics and you want them in the civil service and you in particular for civil service the the issue is always that if someone is very good they'll be given difficult stuff and when you do difficult stuff you might get it wrong and even even if you get it right you might be criticized. And if we had a world where there was a powerful incentive to not of anyone who could be criticized in an important civil service role that that that could be a bad thing. But on the other hand, I like democratic accountability. So I'm not taking a position.

>> If we look at how Peter Mandleson responded to all of this unfolding in the past two days, um I mean there's two strands to this. One of course is kind of I guess you know you in your legal capacity. Was there any moment where you were concerned about getting hit with some slap litigation or somebody trying to to put a muffle on you? And on another on another hand, you know, how have you kind of understood his reaction? He's gone on the Sunday Times to do an interview uh where he's been photographed in like a magazine cover with his dog. Um and it seems very much like he's really misunderstood where the public is at on this.

>> He's laughing in our face, it seems to me. Well, it feels as if he's not really taking the gravity of these allegations very seriously in the sense that the rest of the public is. I mean, one thing that I'm concerned about, you know, even as, you know, I make some light off-the-cuff remarks, is that the women and the victims of of Jeffrey Epstein have been lost in this conversation as we've tried to understand just the level of kind of uh involvement and and uh how coalesced, you know, Epstein was with with Mandleson's work that we kind of forgotten actually about the human cost of this man's actions as well.

>> Yes. Um, I mean to be fair, Mandleson was extremely focused on a a victim of this scandal. The victim was him. He sounds extremely sorry for himself. Thinks he's been very hard done by. What's his phrase that he'll it was it was like a 5:30 a.m. drive by shooting, says Mandleson. So, yeah. So, firstly, he thinks he thinks he's the victim. Secondly, he he has this hilarious response to the $75,000 payments that he got in 2003 2004. Um, do a quick trick. Uh, Freddy, did anyone give you $75,000 10 years ago?

>> I need to think. Uh, Dan, I don't quite recall.

>> But yeah, the answer is no.

>> I can assure you I definitely didn't receive any.

>> For I I know poor people. I know rich people. If you receive $75,000 from someone wired to you, and it's not family, it's it's it's a friend, you would remember. And we we we have the bank statements. We have the actual bank statements, the J the JP Morgan private bank statements of Epstein showing the payments. I guess they could be forged. It's pretty pretty implausible. And Mandleson doesn't say there weren't any payments. He says he doesn't believe there are any payments and he'll investigate it. It's a bit like O.J. Simpson. He's he's going to go out and find the real killer. Mandleson's going to go out and find the real person who received that $75,000. Come on. How stupid does he think we are? Ridiculous. So, that's pretty insulting, too. But then then there's his defense to how come his partner at the time received about $10,000 of payments for tuition. And here Mandleson says, "But you know, how could I be influenced by so small a sum?" Which I think many people would think of as insulting because they wouldn't think $10,000 is so small a sum. But also, it's true. I I genuinely don't think Mandleson was influenced by $10,000. I think what was influencing him at that time, we're talking 2009, early 2010. What was influencing him was the opportunity Epstein gave him to find lucrative employment after government. And I think that that's what he was really focused on. And bam, as soon as the government falls, as soon as Mandleson's out, you see Epstein discussing with I think Jess Staley if they can talk to Deutsche Bank to to find a role for Mandleson. And then a few months later, they Epstein discusses with Mandleson that yes, there was a role from Deutsche Bank. uh a million dollars base three to five million bonus per year of course but someone told Mandleson he's underelling himself if he accepts that.

>> But.

>> They then I think they realize there's a problem the problem is that there's a rule that ministers can't take jobs within two years without seeking the advice from a from a from a government committee and presumably the advice would be you're crazy you can't do that. So, Epstein finds a loophole. He says he's he's got a way around the restriction. The way is that you've got to be an adviser because advisers are incredibly stupidly not in the rules. Problem is, no one's actually going to pay $5 million for an adviser. So, what does Mandleson do? He sets up Global Council. And I think the what is I think yet to come, I may be wrong, it may never come, but what I think is yet to come is seeing the business that Mandleson created Global Council and what it did and Epstein's role in that because I I see Global Council as essentially laundering disclosure rules. If Mandleson accepted business from the prime minister of Kazakhstan, that has to be declared to the House of Lords. If Mandleson's company accepts business from the prime minister of Kazakhstan and God knows who else, nothing has to be disclosed. He has to disclose that he owns the company, but the company is just a black box. It's an amazing hole in the regulation of the House of Lords and the House of Commons. We have this with Zahawi. Zahawi's company took a loan of 20 million pounds from persons unknown on on off-market terms. You think you'd have to disclose who that loan is from, but no, no, no. because it's his company. You don't have to. It's a massive loophole in House of Commons and House of Lords regulation. And I think Mandleson built Global Council to go through that loophole.

>> Doesn't this speak to the kind of wretchedness and the assumed idiocy of the public where rich and powerful largely men are able to evade any form of accountability are able to articulate a kind of incoherent message to assume that the British public is stupid and then when they are found out there seems to be a kind of response that doesn't really warrant the behavior that they've been able to get away with which only furthers a sense of distrust and abhorrence directed at politicians. And as you say, of course, I do believe 95% of people who are elected into the House of Commons absolutely diligently serve the interests of their community. But this paints a really rotten picture at the heart of a British establishment and within British politics that I fear can't be undone, at least not in the next coming months or years ahead.

>> I think you're right. I think it's hugely damaging. I think it's fair to blame Keir Starmer for the appointment where you let's land on that political question. I'm not going to express a view, but I think a lot of voters will blame the government for Mandleson's historic misdeeds, which is not accurate or fair, but I think people will do it just as they blamed the the 2010 Labour government 2009 when was it for for the expenses scandal that mostly didn't involve government ministers, involved MP parties, but it became.

>> Overlooking the crimes permitted against innocent people, which I think is the gross part about it.

>> Yeah. Yeah. It's extraordinary.

>> Dan, I'm going to do something slightly different because we have a lawyer on the show, and you mentioned here, you know, an idea, a theory perhaps about Peter Mandleson's uh consultancy business, Global Council, and why he might have set that up. I just want to check with my lawyer on camera that we're not going to be in in trouble for for posting any of this. Are we going to be expecting some litigation coming our way? Because I don't know if the coffers are running deep enough for this yet, mate.

>> So the the good news is I think you're not that if if I say now I think Peter Mandleson was lying when he when he says that he can't remember frankly any of this and I think he's lying when he says that he thought the payments to his partner were were a bursary. I that is all right for several reasons. The first is that it's my opinion based on evidence. It's based on the evidence of say we know how the payments were made to his partner. We know what the discussions look like. We know who they came from. We know that none of it looks like how bursaries how bursaries are paid. We know that normal people can remember large payments. Mandleson said he he said to me he doesn't recall considering the purchase of a 2 million flat in Rio Panama company. He doesn't recall that. That was in I think 2011. Um, how can you not recall almost buying, at least on his version, a 2 million pound flat in Rio? How how can you not not recall that? So, I think he's lying. And I can say that because that's my opinion backed by evidence. I can also say that because you can only sue for libel if the words complained of could could cause serious harm. And Mandleson is so deep in [ __ ] at the moment that something I say on this podcast is very unlikely to actually cause him serious harm. But the main reason he's not going to sue anyone at the moment is that if he did, he would be on the witness stand and his historic documents would have to be disclosed and I don't think he wants to do that.

>> The reason I asked Dan, not only just for my own peace of mind, but is also because you put out a tweet recently saying that libel law in the UK is is not fit for purpose. Can you explain a little bit more about why, you know, if people read a headline on the Guardian website, for instance, they'll be reading about allegations from about Epstein's relationship with Peter Mandleson rather than any direct statement of their relationship.

>> Yes, this this one made made me spit up my espresso in the morning. It the headline in the Guardian this morning, at least online, was Mandleson could face police inquiry over alleged leak to Epstein. It's not alleged. It's we we have the paperwork. We we have the emails. Mandleson hasn't even bothered to deny them. His memory isn't malfunctioning on on these emails. So, it's not alleged. Why do they say alleged? They say alleged because under our libel law, someone who is very wealthy, and Mandleson is he's not very very wealthy, but he's moderately wealthy can instruct lawyers pursue a claim. Even if the claim is a pile of crap, it could still take a year of your life, two years of your life dealing with it. If you win, you'll be left with a fair chunk of your lawyer's costs. If you lose, and you know, people who are right lose in court, news alert, you you'll pay your costs, which yeah, could be a million quid, you'll pay his costs, which will probably be more, and probably a small amount of damages on top. So, rationally, why would you do that? Why would you get yourself in a position where you're going to lose? It's just a question of how badly you lose. Rationally, if you get a letter from Mandleson's lawyer saying you you have to say this is an alleged leak, you're going to do what he says. Now, I don't think that happened in this case. I think Mandleson is so far up the creek that that is not going to help him. But the culture that it creates is deeply ingrained in all of us and certainly in journalists and their lawyers. And that's why the word alleged is in this headline. Is it still there? Is it still I don't know if it's still there. We should check if it's still there. Um, yeah, it it's really sad when you cannot call a metal object with a wooden handle for digging a spade. And this is a spade and this was a leak and they should be able to say so.

>> And if we return to our earlier comments about how, you know, what happens next for Peter Mandleson, you seem to think that there could be some quite serious consequences on the horizon. Number 10 have said that they've referred uh a case to the Met Police about passing on of information. What do you think could happen to Peter Mandleson?

>> Well, on past form, he'll disappear for a couple of years and then be appointed to a new role. He's this this is the third time. It's the third and greatest scandal. Surely that won't happen. Will there be a prosecution? I need to be careful not to do the thing of a lawyer in one area pretending they're an expert in others. I am not an expert in the criminal law of of what's called misconduct in public office, which is a Victorian, I think, offense, which is it's a common offense. It's not even written down anywhere. The Law Commission said, I think last year, that it should be abolished and replaced with something people understand. So, the law's a mess. It is it is possible that the police say, "Yeah, he didn't actually break the criminal law." It looks to me like there is at least an argument that he did. We don't have the law written down because it's a common law offense, but it was summarized in a case. It's got four components. First one, you've got a public officer, which a minister is acting as such. Hang on. Was he acting as a public officer? So, what that means is if a prison officer smuggles drugs into jail, he's a public officer acting as such and the offense can apply. And that's quite a common case where maybe it is applied these days. But if a prison officer is picking up a child from school and bribes a traffic warden, he's not acting in the course of his public office. So here, for example, when Mandleson sent that email suggesting that JP Morgan threatened the British government, was he acting as a public officer? Probably wasn't in his office. Maybe he was having breakfast. Is the offense made up? I don't know. On the other hand, if he gets an email from government and then forwards it within 4 seconds, seems to me caveat not an expert in this area that he is then acting in the course of his public office. That's the first element. I spent time on it just because it's the difficult ones. The other ones I think are easy. You've got to willfully conduct misconduct yourself. Duh. To such a degree as to amount and abuse the public's trust in the office holder. Again, my legal view is duh obvious and without reasonable excuse or justification. Come on, it's obvious. So, I think it comes down to a technical point about whether he was a public officer acting as such and I do not have the expertise to to call that to to take take a call on that point. I I keep meaning to catch up with some people who do and come out with something on this because I think it's interesting and important and I think people would be appalled if the answer is actually there's no criminal offense here. He he he was a bad boy but nothing could be done.

>> Well, it would be maddening, wouldn't it? I mean, it what what he's done basically seems like treason in the kind of basic sense of the term. you've gone.

>> It does seem like treason, but if you think misconduct in public office is a ridiculous old offense, you should look at treason, which is set out by two statutes from, I think, the 16th century and the 18th century. And unless you murder the king, sleep with the king's daughters, try and kill the Lord Chamberlain, and a few other things, you you're not guilty of treason. Oh, and and of course siding with the king's enemies, but we weren't at war with the US at that time. So, no, it's not treason. What else is it not? It's not insider dealing. So he was passing information I would say colloquially was market sensitive. He he told Epstein that the 500 billion deal to bail out the the Euro zone was going to be signed and announced that evening and it was. He told Epstein that Gordon Brown was about to resign and he did. That's market sensitive information but our insider trading rules apply if you give someone information intending they'll trade on a specific stock. If I say to you, I know Marks and Spencer is about to go up because I've seen their internal figures. That's insider trading. If I say to you, yeah, I think all the stocks are about to go up. It's not. So, I think I think the only way to get him is misconduct in public office. The other possibility is the US prosecutes him for something because the US love prosecuting people for all kinds of [ __ ]. They have a bunch of securities rules which are extremely wide ranging and maybe that's not out the question. Don't know.

>> Well, it's interesting because on the market sensitive information that's been explicitly put in the dossier, I believe that's been handed over to the police in this country.

>> Oh, that was [ __ ] stupid. Sorry, that that was stupid. The when when you're a lawyer, normally you have like 10 points and one of them is really good. Two of them are okay and seven of them are crap. And what a bad lawyer does is they put them all in all the kitchen sink. And when when someone gets there, if it's the judge or the police, when they see the crap points, they think, "Well, this person's not serious." What you should do, I think some of the best lawyers I've ever known only do the good point. They drop the two kind of marginal points, but you don't run with the crap points. If they really suggested insider dealing, either the eminent regulatory specialist I spoke to yesterday is wrong, which which he is not, or or or they're wasting time.

>> Well, a cynical take, Dan, would be leave that in to get the case thrown out. No.

>> Oh, don't do that. I can't believe that. Never put down a conspiracy what can be explained by incompetence.

>> But on conspiracy, there's a lot of people online who are thinking that they've been vindicated by the release of this.

>> It's all a conspiracy.

>> Million emails, right? I mean, but it is interesting. I mean, you know, we were talking about um Fiser Islam's comments earlier. I mean he said and I think it's very apt was that you know the way in which we're taught to think about bond vigilantes the people who sell off UK gilts who have a lot of control over the UK's ultimate borrowing capacity that the way in which these people operate it's beyond kind of understanding as one person pulling strings these are market forces that can't.

be controlled. And yet, on the other hand, we're getting told here about the CEO of JP Morgan suggesting to the then Chancellor of the UK that if he didn't comply with giving bankers a better time of it, that they were going to sell off UK bonds. Doesn't that sound like a bit of a conspiracy?

I think it's what exactly what you expect a business person to do. Adam Smith famously said that if you put two businessmen in a room, they'll start discussing a conspiracy against the public. You know, there is always a conflict of interest between politicians acting for what they hope is the public good and some businesses, and there will always be a struggle between them. There will always be lobbying. There will always be pressure. There will always be threats. It's the job of politicians to assess that, to not always say no. Sometimes business will be right, but not to give into pressure. And Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown did that. Peter Mandelson did the exact opposite.

And when you think about someone like the GB News narrative that Gordon Brown sold the gold at a cheap rate, had he just sold gold, uh, two weeks ago when it was trading at record highs, the UK would have had 50 billion more pounds. How do you judge that as somebody who is not just a tax lawyer but understands the financial system very well?

Yeah, I mean, that that was always a moronic criticism. And governments across the world were selling gold at that time because they thought they, they held too much gold. There was no point holding it. It doesn't yield a return. After all, it is, is a lump of gold. Now, in retrospect, it would have made a lot of sense not to sell gold. In fact, to buy up all the gold they could. And if they did that, the UK would now have rivers of gold flowing through London. But hang on, governments are not hedge funds. Yeah, we don't want our governments to buy and sell financial assets to try and make a profit. And yet, if we can go back in time and do that, fantastic. But if instead we had a government which took pots on, um, oh, I think this is going to go up, I think this is going to go down. What do you think would have happened on average? Do you think on average they would have made money? Do you think on average they would have lost a bloody fortune, like all the local councils that have tried investing in things? No. It's a, it's a terrible idea. And it's, it's made either people who don't understand the gold market, don't understand what government should do, or are acting in bad faith. In GB News's case, I think it's all three.

But isn't it funny that that is the narrative?

Did I just do something political? I hope I didn't.

We finally got it, Dan. We got it on camera and recorded. He does say political things after all.

I just...

You're going to be getting from my, a letter from my lawyers to pull this segment later. And you know, we would duly comply as well.

Well, we send it back to you for legal advice. Actually, um, Dad, the reason I bring up GB News is I just find it really funny and striking that in the wake of these absolutely bombshell revelations, these millions of emails explaining what Jeffrey Epstein was up to, his billionaire pals, the people in these corridors of power pulling strings, that the only narrative that they want to focus on is Gordon Brown selling the gold. They don't want to talk about any of the victims of grooming, of sexual exploitation by some of the most powerful people in the world. When a perhaps the left has a blind spot on these issues. They're much more happy to talk about Gordon Brown selling gold in 2009. Why do you think that is?

It's weird because it's incredibly dated, stupid theory. Aside from being a stupid theory, do, uh, does you're young people, lot younger than me, is does this a purchase with with the average 20-something that Gordon Brown shouldn't have sold the gold? Really? It sounds like a confused elderly relative shouting at the sky when when they accidentally trip over the curb. Gordon Brown shouldn't have sold. It's a sketch from the Simpsons. No, I don't. I, I don't do interviews with GB News since they did their, the whole, what's the awful person name? Neil Oliver turbo cancer. Jesus. I'm not, I'm not going to do interviews with them.

I, um, I just wanted to go back to the kind of conspiracy and politics, or at least what seems to be the kind of potential blend of both, how people receive politics, and then when people feel vindicated when conspiracies somehow manifest to be an element of the truth. What do you think we should expect when it comes to modern conspiracy theories? Cuz they're, they're floating around the ecosystem everywhere. And they provide quite a simple answer to a whole range of complexities around life today, but on the odd occasion, somehow they seem to be true, or at least there is a grain of truth in what they're saying. How can we be more resilient against conspiratorial thinking that enters our politics? And I don't know, just what should we be doing? Because it's easy to go down a Twitter rabbit hole. Basically.

Conspiracy theories are, are great because they are a wonderful way of explaining the world. Why do we have people coming in on boats into the UK? Well, because that's been coordinated by the Jews because they want to displace white people in the, in the UK. We, so, so really simple explanation. It explains everything. Obviously, those explanations are wrong, but, but they are seductive in their simplicity. And as a way of understanding the world, they're dangerous. They're also useful to people who don't want to talk about the actual real reasons. You know, what are the real reasons why people come on boats from France? Well, those are very complex, and they're not always reasons people on the left are comfortable with. So let's of a conspiracy theories of of left or right, and it makes it a lot easier. Is, is Epstein Mandelson? Is it proof of a conspiracy theory? I mean, it's not a conspiracy in the normal sense because it's a conspiracy between two people. It's a very small scale conspiracy theory. It, we still don't really know what Epstein was doing, do we? There's a, there's a common view what he was doing was insnaring celebrities, filming celebrities, blackmailing celebrities. No sign of that in the documents. He was flattering people. He was giving them small amounts of money. He was giving them information. More than anything else, he was taking information from here and passing it to there. I don't know if he needed to blackmail anyone. Is this a conspiracy? I don't know. What, what does it really say that the fact that Epstein was able to do this for so long? What does it really say about the world and the problems with the world?

One is that there's a, a surprising number of people who are willing to facilitate bad behavior, be that abusing women and girls, or be that bad financial behavior. There were, it always frustrates you when people like, like Epstein, like Diddy, or whatever he calls himself, um, go down, the people around them who are facilitating it somehow escape. Those women don't turn up at Epstein or Diddy's place on their own. They don't appear there by magic. Someone is arranging that. Someone is booking the taxis. So, someone is getting them home afterwards. There needs to be accountability for those people.

Yeah. And it's incredibly galling to some who've been following the case for many years that the only person who's been arrested, convicted in relation to the Jeffrey Epstein, uh, affair is a woman, is Ghislaine Maxwell. Um, how do you think Ghislaine Maxwell squares with this story, specifically on the Mandelson side? I, I believe that you found an email suggesting that Ghislaine was acting for some money and that Mandelson would be involved, but you haven't been able to get any clearer about the details on it.

There's this email between Mandelson and Ghislaine Maxwell, and it's about a, they're on holiday. They're in Turks and Caicos. And she says, "I'm currently in Turks and Caicos. I'm flying by helicopter from PB to the island arriving tomorrow. I can call you when I land to discuss plans with you and it's a plus sign. Act full stop for the money." What does act full stop for the money mean? I mean, when I read that, I genuinely had no idea. So, I, I cheated and posted it on social media. Funny thing is, people who aren't in the financial sector think it means account. I, I would never write account like that. I doubt anyone in the financial sector would. You'd write it as AC or a stroke C. But maybe for someone who's not in the financial sector, maybe she means account because it was about that time the first payment of £25,000 was made to Mandelson. So maybe this is them getting account details for that. Or maybe, I mean, could you mean just act, do some act for the money, but then why would you have a full stop after act? Don't know. There seem to be so many rabbit holes that sleuths on the internet are preparing to kind of jump straight first into. I, I kind of wonder, you know, based on your point earlier about how much of this leads to, you know, more kind of spurious claims or kind of advances, more clear claims, that there is actually still more yet to be uncovered here about how intricately involved Epstein was in the affairs of the most rich and powerful. You know, we haven't spoken about today at all, Prince Andrew. And there have been some claims on circulating on social media that haven't really been in the mainstream about more kind of lurid, you know, salacious, really abhorrent, astonishing claims about his actions as well. Do you think that there's going to be more coming down the track?

I've heard that half the files are still yet to be released.

Is that right? I mean, e-even if no more were released, these files are so hard to search and go through that it's going to take a while as everything comes out of them. You can't look at everything. They Epstein is writes really badly. It's like misspellings, not not just typos. He makes no effort at all in how he writes, which a columnist, I can't remember who, a columnist today wrote that kind of shines a light on his ethical standards, which I think is probably a bit much. But one thing's for sure, it makes it bloody hard to search for stuff and and you miss things when you do. And so I think if nothing more is released, it will still be a while until we see everything. There could be much more here. And as I said earlier, I think there's more about Mandelson's post-government years to to to come out. Whether I'm going to go into that, I don't know. I'd quite like to get back to my covered and get back to tax policy.

So before you head back to tax policy then, we're just going to end with one more kind of remark, I think, about the state of trust in the moment in politics. It seems clear to me that the rise of the populist right has been in part due to the truth of their narrative that elites don't really care about normal people, that elites don't have to follow the same rules as normal people, that elites, when they're meant to be held to account in the same way that normal people are, can just run away from the truth. Do you think that this is going to form a significant, maybe turning point in how British media thinks and deals with those with some of the most powerful in society?

No, I mean, the, the, the reason why is that the, the media always wants access, and that means a certain level of politeness is required. And the media is rightly worried about libel. And therefore, you can have people in the public eye who everyone in the media knows have done or likely have done bad things, and they won't write about it. There's a, there's someone connected with a football club who it's known is accused of a series of rapes and sexual assaults, and I, I know who it is, and you two may know who it is, and I guarantee you every journalist at a major newspaper knows who it is, but it's never written. And the worst thing is that this individual, because no one's writing about the, the accusations, continues to have access to young women and girls. And that, that's what happens when you have a legal system which gets in the way of holding the powerful to account, and in fact stops you from doing it. So we're never going to have, uh, perfection. There's always going to be incentives and motivations that make it hard to challenge the powerful, be they on the left or the right. But the fact the legal system gives the powerful a weapon to protect themselves and to use against people reporting the truth, that's a whole different problem. And no one in politics really seems minded to change that.

Dan, I also just want to give you the opportunity to tell us a little bit more about some of the work that you, you do in your day in day out sort of stuff in at Tax Policy Associates. I understand recently you guys have looked into the amount of foreign money that's invested in the UK. I'm sure it's stuff that our audience are interested in. Are there a few headlines that you'd like to put on the radar of our, what's leftists?

Good. I haven't plugged the website. I'm used to, yes. Go to taxpoly.org.uk. On taxpoly.org.uk, UK, you will see a frequently updated article with all of the Mandelson leaks, the original documents and commentary on them. Also on taxpoly.org.uk, we've got an interactive map showing you hidden offshore owners of UK property. You can go on this map, you can click your location, you can see if there is an offshore company owning property near you. You can see if they are, as the law requires, properly disclosing who owns them or if they're hiding it, and you can trace through and perhaps discover who that is. And what I was supposed to be doing this week is writing and talking more about how it is that the wealthy can hide their ownership of UK property, often, probably most of the time, the wealthy, not wealthy Brits, but wealthy in other countries who have property here and hold it secretly, whether because they're obsessed about privacy, or something darker, be it sanctions evasion, money laundering, tax evasion, you name it. And you can see that on taxpoly.org.uk. How's that for a plug?

That's, that's brilliant, Dad. Thank you so much for your time, mate.

Thank you.

It's a pleasure. We, we should do this the next time there's some appalling crisis.

Well, you've got form now, mate, at exposing some of the worst people in politics. So I assume that the next scandal, you won't be too far away. Thank you so much, Dad, for your time.

Thank you both so much.

Cheers. Thank you.