Peter Mandelson has become a liability

Well, that didn’t take long, did it? Less than a month after presenting his credentials to President Trump, His Britannic Majesty’s Ambassador in Washington was being accused by an MP in the House of Commons of ‘freelancing on US TV’. The UK armed forces minister, Luke Pollard, had earlier distanced himself from comments made by Lord Mandelson, saying ‘that’s not government policy’. 

Both were referring to a typically mellifluous performance by Mandelson on ABC’s popular Sunday politics talk-show, This Week. The presenter was another master of fluent politics-speak, George Stephanopoulos, one-time spokesman for the Clinton White House turned media pundit, and the conversation flowed with amicable ease. 

So where had our newly minted ambassador gone wrong? Let’s get one thing clear. He hadn’t been bamboozled into saying something he did not mean. Stephanopoulos hadn’t set any traps. Mandelson said nothing that he could later claim had been ‘taken out of context’. He was asked (how could he not be?) about the disastrous bust-up between Trump and Zelensky in the Oval Office and had simply expressed, quite clearly, his view that Ukraine’s president should mend fences with Trump, sign up to his peace plan and call Russia’s bluff by being first to commit to a ceasefire.