Peter Mandelson told a reporter to “fuck off” when asked about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
He was questioned about his links with the billionaire paedophile in an interview with the Financial Times as he prepares to become Britain’s ambassador to Washington. However, he told the reporter in no uncertain terms that he did not want to discuss it.
Lord Mandelson said: “I regret ever meeting him or being introduced to him by his partner Ghislaine Maxwell.
“I regret even more the hurt he caused to many young women.
“I’m not going to go into this. It’s an FT obsession and frankly you can all fuck off. OK?”
The pair’s connections have raised questions since a 2019 internal report on Epstein by JP Morgan bank was filed to a New York court.
It found Epstein appeared to “maintain a particularly close relationship with Prince Andrew, the Duke of York and Lord Peter Mandelson, a senior member of British government”.
Epstein, the disgraced financier, killed himself while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges in August 2019
Mandelson said he was “capable of being diplomatic” and claimed he had garnered praise from the former US president George W Bush, who called him “silvertongue”.
He also dismissed comments from one of Donald Trump’s advisers who described him as “an absolute moron”.
Mandelson said: “Some around Mr Trump see me as they view many in Europe. They see me as a leftwing progressive, somebody who might even be anti-business or somebody who might be following the sort of liberalism they’ve just defeated in America.
“What they will discover is I’m not an uber-liberal, I’m not a wokey-cokey sort of person, and I’m pro-market and pro-business.”
