The Metropolitan Police is now investigating Lord Mandelson for alleged misconduct in public office.<\/a> The BBC understands his position is that he has not acted in any way criminally and that he was not motivated by financial gain.<\/p>\nStreeting said: “Mandelson and I saw each other for dinner on average once a year, in a group setting. He offered advice. My partner worked for him 25 years ago and I therefore got to know him better than others of that generation in politics.”<\/p>\n
The released text messages show Streeting feared Labour were “in big trouble” electorally, with voters having no clear reason to support the party. He also criticised the government for having “no growth strategy at all”.<\/p>\n
In March 2025, an exchange begins with them discussing Matthew Doyle, who had recently left his job as Sir Keir Starmer’s director of communications.<\/p>\n
Mandelson asked: “Why was he pushed out?”<\/p>\n
Streeting replied: “God knows”. To which Mandelson responded: “the government’s problems do not stem from comms”.<\/p>\n
Streeting agreed: “quite”.<\/p>\n
Streeting then said he was concerned that he could lose his own parliamentary seat at the next general election.<\/p>\n
“I fear we’re in big trouble here – and I am toast at the next election. <\/p>\n
“We just lost our safest ward in Redbridge (51% Muslim, Ilford S) to a Gaza independent. At this rate I don’t think we’ll hold either of the two Ilford seats,” he said.<\/p>\n
And in a clear, if indirect, criticism of Sir Keir’s leadership, Streeting said “there isn’t a clear answer to the question: why Labour?”<\/p>\n
In a separate set of messages from July 2025, Streeting sought advice from Lord Mandelson after French President Emmanuel Macron announced he would be formally recognising a Palestinian state.<\/p>\n
Streeting said “morally and politically, I think we need to join France”.<\/p>\n
He added that “politically, a Commons vote will be engineered in September on recognition, and we will lose it if we’re not ahead of it. There are no circumstances in which people like me or Shabana [Mahmood] could abstain or vote against”.<\/p>\n
Lord Mandelson replied that he was “worried that such a gesture now could blow a 2 SS [two state solution] out of the water if Israel decided that unilateral recognition justified further WB [West Bank] annexation”.<\/p>\n
Streeting replied that “Israel is doing it anyway” and said “this is rogue state behaviour. Let them pay the price as pariahs with sanctions applied to the state, not just a few ministers”.<\/p>\n
The health secretary said there is considerable unhappiness among Labour MPs, and there could be “resignations at every level” in the government over the issue.<\/p>\n
Lord Mandelson replied that “if those events unfolded it would certainly convince the public that we are unfit for government”.<\/p>\n
In September, Sir Keir announced the UK’s recognition of a Palestinian state<\/a>. Ministers highlighted the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, which are illegal under international law, as a key factor in the decision.<\/p>\nThe move drew fierce criticism from the Israeli government, families of hostages held in Gaza and some Conservatives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Streeting’s team said they released all private messages between the pair from six months before Lord Mandelson’s appointment…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417390,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-417389","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}