When Britain’s Dark State is Opened up: The Epstein Taboo
Politically-connected lobbying is dangerous and high risk. Ask Peter Mandelson, ask Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, ask Tony Blair.
Lobbying is a dirty game which has mushroomed under neo-conservative regimes, including recent Labour governments . The power of the lobbyist is enhanced by the revolving door between politics and business. This has whirled faster than ever in recent times. The state has been powerless to thwart the appeal of private sector largesse for contacts.
Information and media facilitate the workings of the deep state. Once a term used to describe security services, now the deep state is peopled by private sector operatives. These are no longer George Smileys but Peter Mandelsons and Benjamin Wegg Prossers. They are master media manipulators.
Epstein operated in this dark world of the forbidden and the unspeakable. He found a fellow spirit in Mandelson, the ‘Prince of Darkness’.
Mandelson’s mistake was to surface from the deep state to the open state, that is the political establishment. The behaviour of the deep state is not governed by ethics, it is covert. It is not revealed to the open state which is peopled by those who have to believe in integrity and transparency, to the best of their ability. Deep does not mix with open.
Tony Blair walks a fine line: Is he deep or is he open?
As soon as Blair left Number Ten as prime minister (handling over to the Master Open statesman Gordon Brown), Blair moved over to JP Morgan Chase on 10 January 2008 to lobby governments on behalf of the bank. He became senior advisor and a member of the advisory board and paid £2m a year. Jes Staley, a good friend of Epstein’s, was working at this time as CEO of J.P. Morgan Asset Management and CEO of the Investment Bank before he left in 2013. Staley was a close friend of Jeffrey Epstein and visited his island many times Staley’s daughter called him Uncle. Staley went onto become the chief executive of Barclays Bank.
The Epstein affair swalloweed him up, when Staley told the board his relationship with the sex offender was purely professional. They initially believed him. Then there was some publicity about Epstein and Staley and they woke up. The Regulator barred him from running a bank ever again. Staley had crossed the line between open and unacceptable. The taboo principle was operating.
Go Foreign for a clean skin
Walking his fine line, Blair founded Tony Blair Associates to make approaches to politicians like Muamur Ghadaffi whom Blair met in 2008. He closed down TBA in 2016 and set up The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. This has a stronger ring of ‘open state’ about it. Be open, and hope noone looks beneath the surface.
Tony Blair Associates, ably abetted by Alastair Campbell, Cherie Blair and Portland Communications a PR firm founded by Tim Allan, had worked out that the best way to operate in the netherworld between open and deep state was to move abroad.
They went to Kazakhstan where they supported the former Kazakh autocrat Nursultan Nazarbayev. They even wrote a speech for him to explain why the country’s leader should be immune to criticism for a massacre of miners by his own troops in Kazakhstan.
They went to Abu Dhabi whether supported Middle Eastern potentates and their companies, notably Mubadala, the Abu Dhabi based sovereign wealth fund.
They went to countries in Central Europe and Africa (notably Ruanda) with dubious or zero democratic credentials. The deep state operator with a democratic curriculum vitae (such as Blair’s) will open up Western doors to the autocrat looking to break into Western economy or western open state approval. Nazarbayev (like Trump to date) may not have been awarded the Nobel prize, but both have tried hard to lay claim to being democrats.
That democratic CV is powerful for banks as well as states. They will pay handsomely to acquire it.
“I assume what Blair does for JP Morgan is open doors…. The idea that he gave advice to anyone seems to me to me to be a stretch,” one banker told me.
Blair appears in the Epstein files. In 2015, an unnamed individual (but presumably French) wrote to Jeffrey Epstein, saying…”Oh la la, my gentle Jeffrey. Thank you very much. I went to met [sic] Tony Blair, his wife, Christine Lagarde, a lot of parlamantarians from Ukraine and Harvard graduates : we debated in round tables with world smartest CEOs, Ministers, and billionaires. I was over the moon being with intelligent wise people around!!! There are a lot of young talents that i met, under 35, bright people, part of too for 2016. Do you want their contacts ? In which fields you need talents? Kind re ards/Cordialement,”…
Epstein boasted of close ties to Blair and it was reported in January 2026 that Epstein told an associate, “Tony know me well, ask him for tea.”
Evidence of Blair’s connections to Epstein is sparse, and the closeness may have been wishful thinking in the mind of Epstein. One suspects he did a lot of that.
For more on Blair’s business interests, read the book I co-wrote called, “Blair Inc: The Man behind the Mask”, by Nick Kochan, Francis Beckett and David Hencke.
Mandelson also went to Russia, in the days when it and Putin were acceptable.
The Russian factor
Peter Mandelson was musing on 29 May 2012 about who to arrange to meet at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2012 and wrote to Duncan Buchanan, one of his communications fixers: “Not sure who to try to meet. Heads of state etc prob unobtainable. Go for Ali Babacan, James Bacchus, I will email Bagis, Boni, Cacic, Curado, Nowlin, Al Nahyan, Natalegawa, Putin, Stubb.”
Among the leaders he said he would email was Vladimir Putin who had just won an election in Russia and returned to the leadership of the Russian Federation and the Presidency. He had yet to be tarnished by the invasion of Crimea, let alone the fullscale invasion of Ukraine.
In the same email, we see Epstein proposing a meeting with Andrey Kostin, Chairman and CEO, JSC VTB Bank and a close Putin confidant.
Wegg-Prosser was Mandelson’s gofur who had set up Global Counsel, a lobbying firm. Wegg-Prosser is married to a Russian Yulia Khabibulina. Khabibulina who is said to be associated with the media industry in Moscow and wa said to have stayed in 2008 with her husband and Lord Mandelson at Nat Rothschild’s Swiss chalet. Wegg-Prosser quit Global Counsel on 6 February 2026 after the firm became tarnished by its links to Mandelson and clients started to walk away.
It is clear that a lobbying firm that touts its ability to help someone else with their reputation cannot be allowed to have their own reputation tarnished.
Another name cropping up under the Wegg-Prosser cdatchline is that of Oleg Deripaska. Mandelson had spent time on Deripaska’s yacht in Corfu with George Osborne. Jeffrey Epsein wrote to Mandelson on 8 November 2010, asking ‘if oleg [will] either be in paris, thurs till sunday , or moscow next week’.
Epstein emailed Mandelson on 9 November 2010, asking if he could arrange Deripaska’s help to obtain a Russian visa for him as presumably an approach from someone convicted [in 2008] of soliciting a prostitute would mean instant rejection. Jeffrey Epstein had served 13 months in jail and registered as a sex offender.
OFAC designated seven Russian oligarchs, including Oleg Deripaska, and 12 companies they own or control on April 6, 2018.
Peter Mandelson was pushed out of Global Counsel in September 2025 and received a £1.3 milion plus payout for his shares on January 8, 2026. Today he is exposed as a mere fortune hunter and intermediary for the Russian elite. The world of the Light state has been opened up to the dirty dealings of the Dark state and one of its most adept operators.
Crossing the line
The light is now being shone on the secrets that lobbyists like to hide for their clients. Epstein is the ultimate secret but now he is polluting all that he has touched. He took Mandelson across the line from acceptable to taboo.