𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Peter Mandelson has sparked fresh fury after refusing to apologise for his friendship with dead paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. The Labour Peer was sacked as British ambassador to the US after emails revealed that he had encouraged the convicted child sex offender to seek early release from prison.

In an interview with the BBC Lord Mandelson declined to apologise to victims for his association with Eptsein. He said: “I want to apologise for a system that refused to hear their voices and did not give them the protection they were entitled to expect. That system gave him protection and not them.”

“If I had known, if I was in any way complicit or culpable, of course I would apologise for it. But I was… I was not culpable, I was not knowledgeable of what he was doing.

“I regret and will regret to my dying day the fact that powerless women were not given the protection they were entitled to expect.”

Asked why he stayed friends with him after his conviction, he told the Laura Kuenssberg show: “It was a most terrible mistake on my part,” Mandelson says.

“I believed the story he told in 2008 in his first indictment in Florida. I accepted his story and I wish I hadn’t.

“I gave my support to somebody because I believed what he was telling me and it was misplaced loyalty.”

He added: “The crux of this is not me… The crux of this is that so many hundreds of young women were completely trapped, powerless in a system that did not listen to what they had to say.”

Asked whether he ever saw or heard anything that gave him any cause for concern when with Jeffrey Epstein.

He says he “never saw anything in [Epstein’s] life, when I was with him, when I was in his homes, that would give me any reason to suspect what this evil monster was doing in preying on these young women”.

He says that because he was “a gay man in [Epstein’s] circle, I was kept separate from what he was doing in the sexual side of his life”.

Lord Mandelson is asked whether he misled government when he was being considered for the role of British ambassador to the US by failing to disclose all relevant information.

For context: Mandelson was fired by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer in September after emails showed he had sent supportive messages to Epstein as he faced charges for sex offences in 2008.

Mandelson says emails between him and Epstein “came as a huge surprise and a huge shock to me”, as well as to the government.

He says the emails no longer existed on his server, which had long been disused. “I was unable to share emails with [the government] that I didn’t recall and I didn’t possess.”

Asked whether he deserved to be sacked, he says: “I understand why I was sacked.”

“I understand why [Starmer] took the decision,” he adds. “But one thing I’m very clear about is I’m not going to seek to reopen or re-litigate this issue. I’m moving on.”