Peter Mandelson, as president of his then advisory firm Global Counsel, lobbied hard for ministers to attend his events and to meet his firm’s staff in the months following Labour’s general election win, newly released documents reveal.
Emails and WhatsApp exchanges show how active the Labour peer was in the wake of the election to work his contacts within government to the potential advantage of both his company and his then campaign to be chancellor of Oxford University.
Just a few days after the 2024 general election, Mandelson, a Labour peer, sent a WhatsApp message to Spencer Livermore, the financial secretary to the Treasury, in which he asked him for lunch.
Lord Livermore, a former director of political strategy in Downing Street under Gordon Brown, accepted. Mandelson suggested the meeting be held “away from HMT [the Treasury]”. The exchange suggests a Global Counsel employee was also going to be invited.
A few days later, Mandelson also emailed Patrick Vallance, the new science minister, after apparently seeing him the previous evening.
In an email from his Global Counsel address, entitled “Economic change”, Mandelson provided Vallance with a series of reflections on his own time as a minister.
Two months later, Mandelson sent Vallance a further email inviting him to attend a panel event on research and innovation that he intended to hold in Oxford in late October or early November.
Mandelson was running for chancellor of Oxford at the time but he told Vallance that it was not a “campaign event as such” but “would be an attempt to stimulate interest in the subject”.
Vallance responded: “Could we do it after the election of the new chancellor so that it doesn’t get seen as part of that process?”
Mandelson also emailed the new trade minister, Douglas Alexander, who served in Tony Blair’s government, on 22 July, introducing him to a Global Counsel employee. That had followed a meeting between Mandelson and Alexander the previous day, a WhatsApp record suggests.
“As Douglas is now going to try and push trade policy up hill on behalf of our great nation, I really think you two should meet and talk asap. Over to you,” Mandelson emailed.
Alexander responded: “Peter, thanks for the introduction”. He added, in a direct message to the unnamed Global Counsel employee, that he would “email you separately to find a slot that suits”.
A WhatsApp exchange confirmed that the meeting took place. “Seeing [redacted] this afternoon for a proper teach in,” Alexander wrote. “Thanks for the introduction”.
Mandelson chased up: “Did you talk to [redacted] okay?”
Alexander responded: “Yes, thank you. On Wednesday afternoon. It was the single most enlightening conversation I’ve had in the last month on trade so I see why you hold in such high regard. Many thanks again for the introduction”.
“Good,” responded Mandelson. “Happy to help further.”
In October 2024, Mandelson also emailed Alexander a lecture on a “High investment economy”.
In September that year, Mandelson also emailed Sarah Jones, an industry minister, from his Global Counsel account asking her to confirm that she would be able to attend a roundtable to discuss the government’s “clean energy mission”.
“I am keen to bring together a group of interesting and, hopefully, lively people to discuss this opportunity and challenge,” Mandelson wrote. The minister did not immediately respond.
A Global Counsel “senior associate” sent four emails chasing up the minister in which they wrote variously that “Lord Mandelson has asked me to follow up” and asking whether “she has had time to consider the invitation”.
The files are part of a vast tranche of data that MPs voted to release in February relating to Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador including texts with ministers and senior officials.
Members of the House of Lords can have financial interests in organisations involved in parliamentary lobbying on behalf of clients but are prohibited from “offering parliamentary advice or services to clients, directly and indirectly”.
Global Counsel, whose clients have reportedly included TikTok, Palantir and the energy and mining firm Shell amd Anglo American, was founded by Mandelson and his former aide Benjamin Wegg-Prosser in 2010.
Mandelson resigned as a director of Global Counsel in May 2024 but remained as president until January 2025 when he took up his short-lived role as the UK’s ambassador in Washington.
The company went into administration in February, following the disclosures about Mandelson’s friendship with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
