In your briefing today:

📣 The Metropolitan Police has confirmed it has received “a number of reports” alleging misconduct in public office after revelations about Lord Peter Mandelson’s close friendship with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Both the SNP and Reform UK said they had reported the peer to police, while other parties joined calls for police to investigate claims Mandelson passed on sensitive government information - including details of interventions to support the Euro at the height of the financial crisis, and plans to sell off government assets - to his friend. (BBC)

Lord Mandelson has not commented on the allegations in detail, but The Times does run comments from him today, apparently as part of a feature it had been planning on Mandelson before events overtook it. “Mandelson continues to dispute several of the allegations,” reports Katy Balls. “He accepts that his husband took money from Epstein - whom he likens to ‘bubonic plague‘ - to fund an osteopathy course.”

Of Epstein, he says: “They didn’t know him. But like everyone else, I learnt the truth about him after his [2019] death, not in the early Noughties. He was a master manipulator.” (The Times £)

📣 Judges will hear a legal challenge against Scottish government advice on where trans prisoners are held over three days of hearings, starting today.

The Scottish Prison Service policy states that inmates are assessed on an individual basis, with assessments informed by their risk to female prisoners.

Campaign group For Women Scotland says last year’s Supreme Court ruling on the definition of a woman means admission to women’s jails should be based on biological sex. (BBC)

📣 The SNP’s hopes of winning an outright majority in the Holyrood elections have been given a boost after the Scottish Greens said they would not run in most constituency seats, instead focusing their efforts on securing list seats.

The Greens’ decision will avoid splitting the pro-independence vote across most of Scotland, while pro-union parties will be split across four major parties. This may be informing the SNP’s plans for an independence-focused election campaign. (🎁The Times has the exclusive - gift link)

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📣 Edinburgh City Council has released images of plans to replace one of the city’s most controversial buildings - Argyll House, the brutalist landmark in the shadow of the castle which found fame in Netflix’s Dept Q drama. (BBC)

📣 Snow is on the way for parts of Scotland, with two weather warnings issued ahead of heavy falls and strong winds. (STV)

📣 Sandy Begbie, the chief executive of Scottish Financial Enterprise, is urging Scottish ministers to use private finance to fund big infrastructure projects and, thus, stimulate growth. He says projects are currently moving at “glacial pace”. (Scotsman £)

📣 Elon Musk is combining SpaceX and xAI in a $1.25 trillion deal, with SpaceX saying it wants to “form the most ambitious, vertically-integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth, with AI, rockets, space-based internet, direct-to-mobile device communications and the world’s foremost real-time information and free speech platform.” (🎁 Bloomberg had the exclusive - gift link)

📣 A new blood test could improve survival rates for pancreatic cancer. (Independent)

📣 The Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt has reopened. But, of the thousands seeking to cross, only a handful of people made it yesterday. (Sky News)

📣 A restored painting in an ancient church in Rome appears to depict a cherub who bears a “striking resemblance” to Premier Giorgia Meloni: a revelation that is causing widespread debate and vast crowds to jform. (AP)

⚽️ It was a busy day for Scottish clubs as the transfer window slammed shut last night at 11pm: Celtic signed three players on loan to help reinvigorate their season, Rangers made the big-money signing of a striker that they’d been hoping for, and Hibs set about spending some of the cash they earned from Kieron Bowie’s sale to sign their own trio of new faces.

⚽️ Perhaps the most surprising outward-bound transfer was that of young James Wilson. The Hearts youngster has been struggling for time on the pitch in Edinburgh, but now finds himself at Spurs, in what is a six-month trial. (BBC)

⚽️ Unusually, things were less exciting in the English Premier League: their deadline day saw only seven moves completed yesterday, leaving reporters and hours of broadcast coverage unusually quiet. The biggest deal was Crystal Palace signing Jorgen Strand Larsen from Wolves for up to £48 million. (BBC)

🗣️ Few politicians have resigned from major office as often as Peter Mandelson. Entering power in 1997 with New Labour, which he had done so much to mould into a winning machine, in 1998 he was forced to quit for the first time when it was revealed he’d taken a secret loan of £373,000 from his ministerial colleague, Geoffrey Robinson.

Less than a year later, he was back in government as Northern Ireland secretary. Then, in January 2001 he resigned again, this time over allegations of misconduct involving a passport application for the Hinduja brothers. An inquiry cleared him, later, of any wrongdoing.

Fast-forward to December 2024 and - after a career which had included a long stint in the private sector running his lobbying firm Global Counsel - he was whisked back into politics to become Keir Starmer’s Trump-whisperer. He enjoyed some success in that role for a few months, before scandal caught up with him in the form of the Epstein files. He was sacked, this time.

The files which undid him last year were embarrassing: it’s difficult to be seen as a credible diplomat when you have been pictured and quoted as the good friend of a convicted paedophile.

His failure, at first, to apologise to Epstein’s victims only underscored his poor judgement (he later did offer an “unequivocal apology”, adding: “I did not want to be held responsible for his [Jeffrey Epstein's] crimes of which I was ignorant, not indifferent, because of the lies he told me and so many others".

One colleague, speaking anonymously to the BBC, summed up Mandelson’s problem: “He has weaknesses. He likes the high life. A lifestyle he can't afford.”

But those images and words did not suggest wrongdoing, only poor judgment. And it was still possible for Mandelson to claim, as he did, that he and Epstein were peripheral figures in each other’s lives.

The latest allegations are altogether more serious: they suggest Mandelson sent multiple emails containing sensitive and timely government information during the global financial crisis, at a time when he was working as business secretary in Gordon Brown’s government.

The word being used to describe Mandelson’s behaviour by multiple figures in Westminster last night was “treacherous”: this was advice, to a foreign national from someone at the very heart of UK government, advising on government actions, policy discussions, a potential bailout for the Euro and a suggestion that JP Morgan’s boss Jamie Dimon “mildly threaten” then chancellor, the late Alistair Darling.

Gordon Brown has now asked the cabinet secretary to investigate Mandelson’s apparent disclosure of sensitive government information.

They also suggest a far closer relationship than Mandelson has admitted.

On the evening of 6 May 2010, before the General Election polls were to close, Mandelson emailed Epstein saying: “We are praying for a hung parliament. Alternatively, a well hung young man.”

Later in the year, he plaintively messaged the paedophile financier: “Where r u? I miss you”. (Guardian)

This was a closer relationship, both personal and professional, than he ever admitted. This will, at 72, end Mandelson’s political career - and spells huge trouble for Keir Starmer, the last Prime Minister to engage his services.

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