Lord Mandelson: ‘Dark lord’ of New Labour strikes back as UK ambassador to US

Lord Peter Mandelson has made a career of comebacks – from spin doctor to returning to cabinet after quitting twice – and is back again as Britain’s ambassador to the US.

It marks the first political appointment to the UK’s top diplomatic post in Washington in decades.

Peter Mandelson started out as a Labour communications director in 1985 and was first elected as an MP in 1992. He served in the cabinets of Sir Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

Donald Trump – who returns to the White House in January, four years after being ousted – may relate to his comeback story.

The Labour grandee resigned twice from cabinet, in 1998 and 2001, became Britain’s European commissioner between 2004 to 2008, and then made an astonishing return in 2008 under Mr Brown, who made him a peer to become business secretary.

A lynchpin of the New Labour project from its birth in the early 1990s, Lord Mandelson witnessed and participated in the feuds that dominated much of its 13 years in power.

His ability to manipulate the levers of power from the shadows earned him monikers such as “the Prince of Darkness” and “the Dark Lord”.

His first departure from the Department of Trade and Industry in 1998 came after it emerged he had received a £373,000 home loan from then paymaster general Geoffrey Robinson.

He returned to the cabinet as Northern Ireland secretary in 1999 but quit again in 2001 as he became embroiled in the Hinduja affair.

He had been accused of helping one of the Indian billionaire Hinduja brothers get a British passport in return for a £1 million donation to the Millennium Dome.

Despite being cleared by an inquiry of any impropriety in the case, his Westminster career looked finished and he became a European commissioner in Brussels.

Mr Brown recalled him to the cabinet table as business secretary in October 2008, in a move widely seen as an attempt by the then-PM to shield himself from Blairite criticism as he came increasingly under fire.

Lord Mandelson was chief strategist for Labour in London in the 2010 election while Mr Brown toured the country.

Controversy has continued to court him after Labour left government, with questions raised about his links with the disgraced US financier and child sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein.

A vocal critic of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party, Lord Mandelson has since provided advice to Sir Keir Starmer as he sought to win power.

In recent years, the peer has made regular broadcast appearances for Times Radio.

Earlier this year, he was widely tipped as the next chancellor of Oxford University, a position which instead went to Tory peer Lord William Hague.