History is being rewritten. The story we are told is that an evil man called Peter Mandelson, pursuing his own interests, went rogue to collaborate with a serial abuser of girls and women, undermining the good work of people seeking to defend the public interest. All this is true. But – and I fear many will find this hard to accept – it is only half the story.

The much harder truth is that Mandelson’s disgraceful dealings with Jeffrey Epstein were less a betrayal of his brief than an unauthorised extension of it. In 2009 – just as, we now know, Mandelson was passing sensitive information to Epstein – I argued that the government department he ran, called Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (Berr), “functions as a fifth column within government, working for corporations to undermine democracy and the public interest”.

Berr was a smaller and less chaotic version of Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge). Its purpose, I suggested, was to bypass the House of Commons on behalf of capital. It allowed Gordon Brown’s government to create the impression that it was defending the public interest while simultaneously, but more quietly, appeasing powerful lobbyists. In contrast to other government departments, Berr was largely run by unelected lords, who had either been corporate executives, corporate lobbyists or, like Mandelson, members of a concierge class operating on their behalf. I wrote that these ministers, appointed by Brown, “appear to have formed their own lobby group within government”.

Berr sought to part-privatise Royal Mail, breaking a manifesto commitment. It succeeded. It tried to block the EU working time directive: UK government filibusters delayed and........

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