Officers have executed search warrants at two properties linked to Mandelson

Peter Mandelson, the Prince of Darkness, operated in the shadows. Only improved transparency around lobbying can prevent the next scandal, says Alastair McCarpra

Pete Brown’s book Clubland, on the history of Britain’s working men’s clubs, includes an account of early lobbying in Westminster. Faced with the potentially damaging 1902 Licensing Act, the Club & Institute Union (CIU) secured a more favourable outcome from MPs, having “spent its entire forty-year history making friends in high places”.

Brown notes that the CIU’s founder, the Reverend Henry Solly, believed firmly in “working from inside the system and getting powerful men onside”. That approach helped win a crucial victory, allowing clubs to continue selling alcohol.

Spending a career making friends in high places and getting powerful men onside is a decent description of Peter Mandelson’s political CV. Among the many sorry and serious details to come out of the latest Epstein files disclosures, much has been made of Mandelson’s alleged sharing of........

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