Jim Allister

That was the point I was coming to. Sadly, the European Union being the European Union, it had no great interest in investigating those matters; they were rather swept under the carpet. I say to the Government that Peter Mandelson was there as the United Kingdom’s Commissioner to the European Commission, and that gives status and opportunity to venture into inquiries about those matters. Then, of course, he came back to be sacked, again. All of that is largely in the public domain, and that is before we come to Epstein. Equally in the public domain at the point of appointment was the knowledge that Mandelson had an ongoing relationship with a man whose release from prison for child abuse he described as his “liberation”. Our Prime Minister decided that he was a suitable person to be our ambassador in probably the most important capital in the world, in Washington. That was a fatal flaw of judgment by the Prime Minister. I fear that it will be the hallmark of much of his premiership that he made a decision such as that and then came to this House in September, when things began to leak out, and expressed his confidence in Mandelson. There was flawed judgment not only in appointing Mandelson, but in continuing to express confidence in him. The Prime Minister has finally run out of road on this issue, but left hanging around his neck is the fatal misstep of appointing Mandelson—a fatal flaw of judgment. It raises a fundamental point about the credibility of this Prime Minister. That will be the abiding legacy of this situation.