Met searches fuel Mandelson-Epstein UK political crisis (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Welcome back to BBC News and let's return straight away to that breaking news we have just heard from the Metropolitan Police. Let me tell you they have issued a statement, an update they say on their investigations into misconduct in public office offences. They don't mention by name Peter Mandelson but let me tell you what they say in the statement. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Hayley Stewart of the Met says I can confirm that officers from the Met's Central Specialist Crime Team are in the process of carrying out search warrants at two addresses. One they say in the Wiltshire area and another in the Camden area. The searches they say are related to an ongoing investigation into misconduct in public office offences involving a 72 year old man. The statement says he has not been arrested and inquiries are ongoing. So that has just come from the Metropolitan Police of course. It is a week almost exactly since the latest tranche of information was released by the Department of Justice and there's been just a tsunami, an avalanche of information, of emails, of documents and of course that has led to all sorts of ramifications and of course the political ramifications here in the UK. Straight to Westminster, straight to Nick Erdley who was across this story for us and Nick, another very significant development here.

[00:01:30] Speaker 2: It is a significant development Matthew and I think it shows that the Met are progressing this investigation pretty quickly actually. So as we speak they are continuing those searches at a property in Wiltshire and one in the Camden area of London. They are saying that Lord Mandelson has not been arrested and the inquiries into those allegations of misconduct in a public office are continuing. But it does suggest that the Met wants to get this investigation going as quickly as possible. It is another difficult moment for the government because it means that this story is going to be back in the limelight over the next few hours. Remember that a lot of the focus over the past 48 hours or so has moved on to the Prime Minister about his judgement in appointing Lord Mandelson. But as part of that tranche of emails we got published in the US, there are some quite remarkable ones which relate to information that appears to have been shared from Lord Mandelson to Jeffrey Epstein including details of government business shared by insiders in Number 10 with Lord Mandelson when he was business secretary talking about things such as government asset sales. There was also an email in there where it appeared that Lord Mandelson had sent Jeffrey Epstein confirmation that a bailout of Eurozone countries was coming, not something the UK would have been involved in but something it would have known about in advance. So there has been a real sense of shock around Westminster at some of the information that was apparently being shared and police now progressing that investigation, it seems, pretty quickly.

[00:03:15] Speaker 1: And we know when Gordon Brown, the former Prime Minister, raised this back in September there were initial inquiries but it has become clear over recent days that perhaps a lot of these emails were on his private email and that I suppose is significant in terms of just tracing some of the basic information and communications.

[00:03:37] Speaker 2: Yeah, you're absolutely right because you'll remember former Prime Minister Gordon Brown asked in September just before Lord Mandelson was sacked as ambassador for the Cabinet Secretary to look into this and the Cabinet Secretary said he couldn't find anything and one of the reasons for that could, I say could because we're not certain, but it could be that Lord Mandelson wasn't using his government email to communicate with Jeffrey Epstein. My understanding from back in September when some of these emails first emerged was that Lord Mandelson didn't know about them because they'd been at an internet email address, a BT internet email address that he no longer used nor had access to. So it's quite feasible that these emails are also from an email address that he no longer has access to. We'll wait and see what happens with that over the next few days and weeks but it's worth just, Matthew, it has been an extraordinary week. I know us Westminster folk like to say it's been an extraordinary week quite a lot but this is a really difficult position for the Prime Minister. It's moved at a rapid pace. There are plenty of Labour MPs who think that the Prime Minister should have shown more caution when it came to giving Lord Mandelson that job in the first place. There are some people that would say well the benefit of hindsight is a great thing but these documents published just last week by the US Department of Justice about Jeffrey Epstein's contact with various people around the world have just lit a fuse in Westminster and have led to a huge political crisis that has ended Lord Mandelson's political career, may well yet end others too.

[00:05:18] Speaker 1: Nick, separately because the BBC reported only about half an hour ago, it of course underlines just how many developments are coming one after another, that the total number of government documents related to Peter Mandelson that will now be trawled over by the Intelligence Committee is close to 100,000 so a huge number of communications and there is jeopardy potentially and danger in all of that, not just around the appointment but wider issues. One remembers the government's original amendment had a reference to national security but also this other rather strange reference to international affairs and that I suppose is if you link those two things together, there are areas of obvious danger, aren't there, about potentially where messages go and what they've said?

[00:06:07] Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the fear in government is that some of the stuff that could be published is really embarrassing. It could be one of the things covered by this disclosure motion in Parliament, the things the government has to disclose, is all communication between Lord Mandelson, government ministers and special advisers while he was US ambassador. That is potentially a huge amount of information and I think the Epstein files have shown us that Lord Mandelson wasn't always particularly discreet with his private messaging. So that could mean embarrassing stuff about the UK's relationship with the Trump White House, it could mean embarrassing details about Lord Mandelson's role in advising the government about various things it was doing, it could be about personal relationships that Lord Mandelson had with senior people in government. It's potentially a massive, massive moment when that stuff's published. Just to remind everybody what happens because I think there has been some confusion about what will happen next, I don't have a timeline for you, I can't tell you when this stuff is going to be published. What will happen is the Cabinet Secretary, the most senior civil servant in the country, will decide what he thinks can be disclosed publicly. That stuff will go to Parliament and we will see it all. It will be another case of journalists like me going through it, trying to figure out what's in there. There will be some stuff that the government says is sensitive on national security grounds or those international relations grounds you talked about. That will go to the Intelligence and Security Committee. The government will be asked to identify exactly how it thinks it's prejudicial to national security or UK international relations. The Intelligence and Security Committee will then decide what to do with that information. One of the options it could have is to publish it in a report. But given the scope and the scale and the number of documents that are covered by this, it's a huge moment and there will be a lot of people in government extremely nervous about what's going to come out.

[00:08:19] Speaker 1: Exactly. Let's turn to perhaps the wider Labour Party because of course we've had a few MPs break ranks and be very open about thinking the Prime Minister's position is untenable. But what sense are you getting from the various conversations you're having?

[00:08:38] Speaker 2: I think the mood is bad. I think a number of MPs who would have been reluctant to criticise Keir Starmer in the past are now doing so privately. But I don't think we're yet at a tipping point. That doesn't mean nothing will happen in the next few days that changes that. It doesn't mean Sir Keir Starmer might not decide himself that he can't go on. We're certainly at a point where things are extremely dangerous for the Prime Minister, perhaps irrecoverable. But in terms of the immediacy of whether he's removed from office, I don't get the sense that something is about to happen imminently that would force that issue. But there are a lot of things coming up that could. One is the release of those documents. If we get any of that stuff in the next few days and weeks and it's embarrassing for the government or for number ten, more pressure on the Prime Minister. The Gorton and Denton by-election at the end of the month, if Labour is thumped in that, as many Labour folk fear, that will put more pressure on the Prime Minister. May, the local elections in England, the Scottish and Welsh elections as well, if they go as badly for the Labour Party as many expect, potentially finishing third in Wales, maybe even third in Scotland, that would put considerably more pressure on the Prime Minister.

[00:09:56] Speaker 1: You're absolutely right as you go through the various bear traps that are there already in the timeline. Add on to that the simply unknown nature, number ten, the Prime Minister sitting there not knowing exactly where any of this potentially goes, whether it's investigations, whether it's documents, all of that. I was talking to Tom Baldwin, Keir Starmer's biographer, only a short while ago. He agreed with a point you were making an hour or so ago is perhaps one of the things that helps Keir Starmer is the fact that all the obvious successors have their own problems of different sorts.

[00:10:36] Speaker 2: Yes, so where is Streeting, often mentioned as a potential successor, close to Lord Mandelson. Angela Rayner, still being investigated by HMRC, that has not been wrapped up yet, so she has that baggage. There are other names, I could name you quite a few. Some people have talked about the Defence Secretary John Healey, the Armed Forces Minister Al Kearns, the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, all of them have their own issues that certain people in the Labour Party might not want them. I do think there are a lot of people in the Labour Party, when it comes to the bit, when they are asked, do you want rid of Keir Starmer, what would you do next, they don't have a particular answer. Some on the left are worried that if they force the Prime Minister out, they might have someone else they dislike in office. Some in the centre of the Labour Party are worried that if Keir Starmer is forced out, they might get someone from the left. So there are a lot of things that might mean that Keir Starmer in the next few weeks, perhaps the next few months, does remain in number 10. The other one, by the way, is the mechanism for getting rid of a Labour Prime Minister. It ain't easy. It's not like the Conservatives, where the 1922 committee can get a bunch of letters and that forces a confidence vote. Labour's only official mechanism is a leadership challenge, which Sir Keir Starmer could decide to contest, which would potentially take weeks. Again, some Labour folk are nervous that in an unpredictable world, with the war in Ukraine, with President Trump in the White House, that wouldn't be a good idea. So there are a lot of things that are very dangerous for the Prime Minister. There are also a few things that could act in his favour, at least in the very near term. I have got to say, though, Matthew, the main takeaway from the last few weeks is there are a lot of people around this postcode, many of them Labour MPs, many of them previously fans of Sir Keir Starmer who do think that this is the beginning of the end.