Diplomats welcome Peter Mandelson’s expected appointment as next ambassador to US – UK politics live | Politics

Good morning. “I’m reliably informed that I will not be brought back,” Peter Mandelson told a podcast in June, when asked whether he might get a job in a Keir Starmer administration after the election which was then only about a week away. “That has been made absolutely clear. They don’t want any big beasts coming back to mark anyone’s homework.”

Let’s hope that in his new job the intelligence he gathers about what is going on in Donald Trump’s administration turns out to a little bit more accurate.

The news has not been officially confirmed yet, but the story that Mandelson will be the next ambassador to the US has been green-lighted by the government spin machine and here is our overnight version, by Donna Ferguson.

Prime ministers who have to deal with a US president they don’t particularly like have two options: “hug ‘em close”, or “long spoon”. Harold Wilson was in the long spoon category, but more recently “hug ‘em close” has been the option preferred by Tory and Labour leaders and and we have already seen Keir Starmer adopting this approach with some gusto. The Mandelson appointment is just an escalation of this. Steven Swinford from the Times broke the news about Mandelson last night and in his story he reports:

One source said that Starmer’s decision to make a political appointment reflected how seriously he takes the UK’s relationship with the US, adding that Mandelson is a “significant figure in his own right”.

So that is one reason for the appointment. Another is that he might turn out to be very good at it; even his opponents admit that he is skilled political operator, and as a former EU trade commissioner he is an expert in the one issue that will dominate UK-EU relations in the Trump era. And if anyone in Labour politics is likely to establish good personal relationships with the Trump team, it might be him; he is comfortable around rightwingers and plutocrats – although when he made his famous comment in 1998 about being “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”, provided they paid their taxes, he probably never imagined a world in which anyone could be worth $400bn – the amount Trump’s pal Elon Musk has accumulated.

But opinion is divided about the appointment. Sir Simon Fraser, a former permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, worked with Mandelson at the business department, where he was permanent secretary and Mandelson was business secretary, and before that at the European commission. On the Today programme this morning Fraser said Mandelson was the right man for the job. He explained:

He’s a big political hitter, well connected in our government, and I think that’s what we need with the Trump administration.

He’s very interested in international affairs and foreign policy. And by the way, he is well connected in America.

And he has conducted really difficult trade negotiations with the Americans, when we were working together at the EU, so that’s all very important.

But there are two other things. He also knows the China policy agenda very well. That is going to be really important for the Trump administration.

And, finally, Peter Mandelson is, of course, pro-European. He supports a better relationship between the UK and the EU. And balancing the EU relationship the US relationship is going to be the biggest strategic foreign policy challenge.

So, if you put all that together, he is pretty well placed for the job.

Another former diplomat who has welcomed the appointment is Lord Darroch, who was himself ambassador to Washington during the first Trump administration. In an interview on Newsnight last night, he said, with some Trump allies thinking Starmer runs a leftwing government, Mandelson was “exactly the man to persuade them that this is completely wrong”.

But Mandelson’s old enemies on the Labour left may be less complimentary. John McDonnell, shadow chancellor under Jeremy Corbyn, posted a message on social media saying this was a bad appointment. (McDonnell is currently suspended from the parliamentary Labour party over a rebel vote.)

For many reasons associated with Peter Mandelson’s history in and out of political office many will feel KeIr has lost all sense of political judgement on this decision.

We are expecting the appointment to be confirmed later today. And we are also expecting a large batch of new peers to be announced. But otherwise it looks quiet; the Christmas parliamentary recess has started, and there is virtually nothing in the diary.

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