Peter Mandelson\u2019s critics should remember that he is \u201cstill a human being\u201d, Cherie Blair has said in an interview.<\/p>\n
Blair added that the former Labour minister was \u201centitled to a fair trial\u201d after he was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in a public office. He denies criminal wrongdoing and has been released under investigation.<\/p>\n
Lord Mandelson, alongside Blair\u2019s husband and former prime minister, Tony, was one of the driving forces behind New Labour and served in various government roles.<\/p>\n
He was sacked as Britain\u2019s US ambassador last year after it emerged that he had stayed in touch with the child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein after his first conviction in 2008.<\/p>\n
Documents released by the US justice department earlier this year revealed that Mandelson had passed confidential government information on to the financier at the height of the global financial crisis. At that time, Mandelson was serving as business secretary under Tony Blair\u2019s successor, Gordon Brown.<\/p>\n
Speaking to Times Radio, Cherie Blair said: \u201cI feel very sad that it\u2019s come to this. I think \u2026 when anyone\u2019s life falls apart, we should remember that there\u2019s still a human being. And \u2026 of course, we should also remember that they\u2019re entitled to a fair trial.\u201d<\/p>\n
She added: \u201cIn the media, and particularly today with social media, too many people forget that the people that they\u2019re talking about are human beings with feelings and can be hurt.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Epstein files revealed that Mandelson arranged a meeting between Epstein and Tony Blair when the latter was still serving as prime minister.<\/p>\n
However, Cherie Blair said. \u201cI don\u2019t really think Tony has been drawn into this. I mean, the prime minister meets millions of people all the time. And in fact, it was, I think, Bill Clinton who asked him to meet with Epstein.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cherie Blair said she had been mentioned in the files, adding: \u201cI happened to be at a women\u2019s event and his girlfriend was there and he then recounts this. It just shows what [Epstein] was doing \u2026 he met millions of people and he used them in order to make himself seem important.\u201d<\/p>\n
She criticised coverage of the files, arguing that reporting on them had been too focused on \u201cimportant men\u201d as opposed to the women and girls who had been subject to Epstein\u2019s abuse.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is about individual women who were trafficked, who were abused, who were groomed,\u201d she said. \u201cSometimes what worries me about the Epstein files is it all becomes about the important men \u2026 this should be about what happened to those women and girls, including the young girls.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Peter Mandelson\u2019s critics should remember that he is \u201cstill a human being\u201d, Cherie Blair has said in an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475416,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-475415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475415","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=475415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}