Mandelson lobbied hard for advisory firm after Labour victory, papers show

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. …