'Sneaky Pete' having to quit again should shock no one

Somebody should take the prime minister to one side and introduce him to a natty little tool called “Google”, because the evidence suggests he may be a stranger to the concept of search engines.

- ALAN RUSBRIDGER

“The way it works, prime minister, is that you can type in ‘Are there any red flags about Peter Mandelson that I should know about before giving him an extremely sensitive high-level job in government?’ And before you can blow your nose, it will produce more red flags than a Spanish bull festival.”

Let’s have a go, shall we?

Oh yes, I remember now, there was that unfortunate business in 1998 when Peter had to step down over the revelation that he’d accepted a massive and undeclared loan to buy a posh house in Notting Hill.

And then - oh God, it’s all coming back to me - he had to resign again over that business with the Hindujas and a passport. That’s right, it says here he was later cleared, but his reputation was already so iffy that he really had no choice but to go.

Then - ooh, it’s all here, so clever, isn’t it? - there’s his taste in immensely high net worth, er, “friends”.

Damn! I’d clean forgotten that yachting holiday with George Osborne and Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, who - let’s google him - seems, oh how embarrassing, to be sanctioned by the US, the UK and the European Union and has been slammed with an order freezing his assets and banning him from travelling to Britain. But surely I couldn't have known about his dealings with Jeffrey Epstein? Don't tell me Google would have raised alerts over that?

Oh, hang on. There's a 2019 JP Morgan bank compliance review, which makes for uncomfortable reading. And a 2023 FT report detailing how he stayed at Epstein's Manhattan home while its owner was in jail. Ooh, and a C4 Dispatches report about using a convicted sex offender as a fixer... and all kinds of stuff about him being in Epstein's black book.

It was, in other words, all hiding in plain sight.