Lord Mandelson faced intense pressure last night over excruciating messages to ‘my best pal’ Jeffrey Epstein.
Britain’s ambassador to Washington hailed his love for the disgraced financier as he sent photos of himself topless and wearing a fluffy white dressing gown, it emerged.
Downing Street and Cabinet ministers shrugged off questions about Lord Mandelson’s judgment after US politicians released his holiday snaps from a visit in around 2002 to Epstein’s Caribbean island – dubbed ‘orgy island’ by one of his sex slaves.
Critics questioned whether his position remained tenable, just a week before the crucial state visit by US President Donald Trump to the UK in which Lord Mandelson plays a key role.
The Labour peer has expressed his ‘regret’ for ever having met Epstein – who affectionately nicknamed him ‘Petie’.
However, the full depth of their relationship has never been revealed.
On Monday night, Democrats in Congress released a ten-page greeting handwritten by Lord Mandelson as part of a 238-page photobook compiled for Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003 by his on-off girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell.
The ‘birthday book’ features lewd messages from friends and associates of the billionaire US paedophile, apparently including Bill Clinton, Mr Trump – who claims it is fake – and an unnamed bikini-clad ‘assistant’ of Epstein who claims she met Prince Andrew and sat on the Queen’s throne in Buckingham Palace.
Lord Mandelson – who once infamously declared himself ‘intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich’ – in a fluffy white dressing gown enjoying a chat with Jeffrey Epstein
Lord Mandelson gazing out of a balcony window in what appears to be Epstein’s house on his private island in the Caribbean
Mandelson’s message in the ‘birthday book’ compiled by Ghislaine Maxwell said Epstein was ‘my best pal!’
Lord Mandelson’s contribution weaves tributes to Epstein as a ‘mysterious’ and ‘intelligent, sharp-witted man’ into a lyrical picture story set over ten pages.
The photos are Lord Mandelson’s holiday snaps, believed to be from a 2002 visit to Little St James, Epstein’s private island, which was later dubbed ‘paedo island’.
One image shows Lord Mandelson wearing just swimming shorts and gazing from a balcony, with the description that ‘you would spend many hours just waiting for him [Epstein] to turn up’.
Another shows a smiling Lord Mandelson in a fluffy dressing gown chatting to his host beneath a handwritten declaration that, ‘Wherever he is in the world, he remains my best pal!’ On the last page, he writes: ‘Happy birthday Jeffrey – we love you!!’
There is no suggestion that he was aware of any of Epstein’s crimes.
The birthday greeting was penned five years before Epstein’s conviction in 2008 for soliciting underage sex, although he has not denied staying at Epstein’s Manhattan mansion the following year after his release from prison.
Epstein was found dead in his US cell in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex-trafficking children.
Last night, the Labour grandee – who once said he was ‘intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich as long as they pay their taxes’ – faced renewed scrutiny over his closeness to the financier, who was accused of molesting hundreds of teenage girls.
Lord Mandelson, 71, will play a significant part in next week’s state visit by Mr Trump, including as a VIP guest at the white-tie state banquet being held in St George’s Hall in Windsor Castle.
Lord Mandelson with Jeffrey Epstein on December 12, 2005, where he is seen trying on a belt during a visit to a boutique in the Caribbean
Mandelson and a friend enjoy a boat ride together as guests of Epstein
Lord Mandelson, who was appointed by Sir Keir Starmer as Britain’s Ambassador to the US, is pictured here with Donald Trump in the Oval Office in May 2025
His job will be to smooth any diplomatic ripples to ensure King Charles and Queen Camilla can host the perfect event when they welcome the Mr Trump and his wife, Melania, to Windsor Castle between September 17 and 19.
Epstein victims have called for Lord Mandelson to be sacked.
Former ‘sex slave’ Sarah Ransome, 41, said that ‘something is really, really wrong here’.
She told The Telegraph: ‘Peter Mandelson should not be ambassador. He needs to be fired.
‘He is unsuitable to be ambassador. Keir Starmer must have known all this.
‘Everybody knew about Peter Mandelson’s close friendship with Epstein.’
Spencer Kuvin, a lawyer who represented nine of Epstein’s victims, said: ‘By allowing someone with clear ties to one of the worst sex abusers of our time to be ambassador is an insult to the victims of Epstein.
‘This man should be questioned by the FBI and the UK Government immediately to find out what he knows.’
Nazir Afzal, the former chief prosecutor for north-west England, said: ‘The most I’ve written in a birthday card to another man is probably “Happy Birthday Son”.
‘Mandelson writes poetry to [Epstein] with whom he stayed after conviction. Now he’s ambassador to the government of another of Epstein’s chums! A “regret” isn’t enough, I’m afraid.’
Craig Murray, a former British ambassador to authoritarian Uzbekistan, posted the photo of the two men and remarked: ‘Peter Mandelson, now Starmer’s ambassador to the USA, with Jeffrey Epstein.
‘I was sacked as ambassador for opposing torture and illegal rendition. The world of power is a dark place indeed.’
A woman listed as a former assistant of paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein wrote of meeting the Duke of York and visiting the private quarters of Buckingham Palace
The unidentified woman wrote Epstein transformed her life from a hotel hostess
She told how she visited Buckingham Palace and sat on the Queen’s throne
A birthday letter that US President Donald Trump allegedly wrote to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. He denies its veracity
The White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt has described the story as ‘fake news’
Sir Keir Starmer has ‘full confidence’ Lord Mandelson, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said yesterday.
And Health Secretary Wes Streeting told LBC: ‘The ambassador has been clear that he regrets ever having been introduced to Epstein – and who can blame him? Who would want to be associated with Epstein given what we know now about the horrific crimes he perpetrated? I don’t think we should tar everyone as kind of guilty by association.’
In the 2003 birthday message, Lord Mandelson wrote about Epstein’s ‘glorious homes he likes to share with his friends (yum yum)’, alongside a photo of Little St James, the idyllic island in the Caribbean which it later emerged had been a place where schoolchildren were molested.
Fringed by coral reefs, it served as Epstein’s lair and was allegedly the ‘perfect hideaway and haven for trafficking young women and underage girls for sexual servitude, child abuse and sexual assault’, according to a lawsuit brought by the Virgin Islands against Epstein’s estate in 2020.
Among those allegedly trafficked to the beauty spot was Epstein’s 17-year-old sex slave Virginia Roberts, who labelled it ‘orgy island’ and said she was sexually assaulted there by Prince Andrew, which he has always vehemently denied.
Ms Roberts – later Virginia Giuffre – spoke about seeing countless women and girls on Little St James, claiming she was ‘passed around like a platter of fruit’ to Epstein’s powerful friends between 2000 and 2002 at a number of locations.
There is no suggestion that her visits to the island coincided with Lord Mandelson’s. In 2002 he was a Labour MP, having resigned from Tony Blair’s Cabinet.
In one of the peer’s photos, he is pictured on the island with two women – their faces obscured – being served breakfast by one of them. She identified herself yesterday as Cathy Alexander, 70, Epstein’s former housekeeper.
She told The Telegraph she believed the other woman, wearing a white vest and black bikini bottoms, was Maxwell.
Peter’s photo casebook – Lord Mandelson’s 10-page birthday greeting to Epstein:
The first page of Lord Mandelson’s 10-page birthday greeting to Jeffrey Epstein hails him as ‘mysterious’
On the second page, a topless Lord Mandelson wearing swimming shorts gazes out of a balcony, captioned: ‘…waiting for him to turn up’
The story continues on page 3 of the letter
Page 4: In one photo Mandelson is stood next to two females, one wearing a white vest and black underwear. Above, he writes that Epstein would leave ‘you with some ‘interesting’ friends to entertain’
Page 5 of the letter: reminiscing about dogs on the island
Page 6: how Epstein would ‘parachute back in’ to your life
Page 7: surprise whiskey reference
Page 8: apparently a holiday snap taken by Mandelson of Epstein’s Caribbean island
Page 9: Mandelson captioned this grinning photo of himself with Epstein and said he was ‘my best pal!’
Page 10: the final page of the letter, a happy snap of Mandelson with a friend, believed to be his long-term partner Reinaldo Avila da Silva
Lord Mandelson’s handwritten caption on the photo states that Epstein would go away and leave ‘you with some ‘interesting’ friends to entertain’.
Mrs Alexander said Lord Mandelson stayed there for a week with his partner Reinaldo Avila da Silva, 53, whom he married two years ago.
She recalled him as a ‘gentleman’ and ‘a very nice guy’. The housekeeper said she had never seen anything untoward during her time looking after Epstein.
Maxwell, 63, is serving 20 years in jail for recruiting young girls for Epstein to sexually abuse.
According to a court document filed in 2023, Epstein and Lord Mandelson had ‘a particularly close friendship’. A photo, thought to be from 2005, showed Lord Mandelson wearing a £21,000 Patek Philippe watch with Epstein in the US Virgin Islands.
By then Epstein was under police investigation over multiple allegations of sexually assaulting schoolgirls. There is no suggestion that Lord Mandelson, then on a taxpayer-funded £200,000 salary as EU trade commissioner, knew anything of the accusations.
For years, Epstein entertained an A-list roster of guests on his island, including Naomi Campbell and Kevin Spacey. Ex-US president Mr Clinton denies being a visitor, and all deny wrongdoing.
Mr Trump – who once told New York Magazine that Epstein ‘likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side’ – has played down his association with the financier.
Another drawing in the birthday book depicts a young Epstein enticing schoolgirls with balloons and lollipops, in 1983, and an older Epstein being massaged by topless women
Bill Clinton’s 50th birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein praising his ‘childlike curiosity’ is seen for the first time
Jeffery Epstein’s estate on Little St James Island in the US Virgin Islands. The disgraced financier also owned nearby Great St James island
An aerial view of Epstein’s 74-acre Little St James Island in the US Virgin Islands
Prince Andrew during his infamous BBC Newsnight interview with Emily Maitlis
An undated photo issued by the US Department of Justice of British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell with American financier Jeffrey Epstein
Virginia Roberts holds a photo of herself at age 16, when she says Epstein began abusing her sexually
In the ‘birthday book’, there is a bawdy sketch allegedly signed by Mr Trump showing a woman’s body with the line: ‘Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret’. The White House says it is ‘fake news’.
Mr Clinton’s birthday message praised Epstein’s ‘childlike curiosity’. Mr Clinton has long maintained he did not know of the allegations against Epstein.
Another drawing in the birthday book depicts a young Epstein enticing schoolgirls with balloons and lollipops, and an older Epstein being massaged by topless women, while a jet – presumably the billionaire’s infamous ‘Lolita Express’ – flies over his mansion.
Lord Mandelson’s office, the British embassy in Washington and the Foreign Office in London were asked to comment yesterday.
