In an attempt to shield the Prime Minister from the growing Mandelson scandal, Business Secretary Peter Kyle has stressed that the decision to appoint the controversial peer was based on the information available at the time. He stated that the Cabinet Office presented its findings, which were “already public,” and a political decision was then made.
Kyle’s defense hinges on a crucial distinction: what was publicly known versus what was privately written. He repeatedly emphasized that the damning emails from Mandelson to Jeffrey Epstein “were not published at the time, were not public and not even known about.” According to this logic, the Prime Minister could not have acted on information he did not have.
This narrative attempts to reframe the scandal as an unfortunate event caused by new information, rather than a fundamental error of judgment from the start. It suggests that had the emails been known, the appointment would never have been made, placing the blame on the absence of evidence rather than the decision to overlook existing red flags.
However, this defense is wearing thin. Critics, including the family of Virginia Giuffre and the Conservative opposition, argue that the publicly known information about Mandelson’s relationship with a convicted sex offender was more than sufficient to disqualify him. They contend the real failure was the political decision to ignore those warnings.
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