When the cops came calling to arrest Peter Mandelson this week, he was already lawyered up. And he’s secured the services of the best – and most expensive – lawyers in town. Mandelson is now staring down the barrel of a legal bill running into the hundreds of thousands of pounds – very possibly the millions, given the mammoth number of documents in the Epstein Files his lawyers will have to trawl through. Add in the forensic examination of government emails swapped in the build-up to Mandelson’s catastrophic appointment as British Ambassador to Washington – and the lawyers’ tills will be cheerfully ringing away. 

Is it time to scrub Andrew from the line of succession?

The Green party is playing with fire in Gorton

My sister Ghislaine became a prop in the theatre of global online outrage

Before Mandelson was arrested, he’d already been visited at his Regent’s Park home by Adrian Darbishire KC, 59. A trifling discount on Mandelson’s thumping legal bill -Darbishire didn’t have to come far, cutting down on his travel costs. He lives in Primrose Hill, a five-minute bike ride from Mandy’s charming neo-Gothic house, and Darbishire is an avid cyclist. He lives with his adopted daughter, 15, from Mongolia, and his wife, Lauren Child, the author of children’s books, including the Charlie and Lola series, which have sold over six million copies.   

Darbishire is one of the top dogs in corporate and financial crime. Mandelson’s charge – misconduct in........

© The Spectator