As Lord Mandelson prepares to work with re-elected President Donald Trump post-inauguration, The Independent looks at his rise from one of the UK’s first spin doctors. Peter Mandelson was born into Labour politics. The prime minister’s pick for US ambassador is the grandson of former Labour home and foreign secretary Herbert Morrison. And, aged just 12, he was invited to Downing Street by his neighbours, then prime minister Harold Wilson and his wife Mary.
![[His return to government was surrounded by controversy]](https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2008/10/04/02/58546.jpg)
The young Peter is said to have been “dazzled” at the time by the opportunity to sit in the prime minister’s chair. But Lord Mandelson’s work as a political fixer for the party has seen him go on to spend five decades at the heart of Labour politics.
![[Peter Mandelson, right, with John Prescott, centre, and Neil Kinnock at London’s Festival Hall after Labour’s election victory in 1997]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/11/21/11/99f325f021a458e50d52788da2083a7dY29udGVudHNlYXJjaGFwaSwxNzMyMjcxMTQ1-2.1043915.jpg)
As he prepares to work with re-elected President Donald Trump post-inauguration, The Independent looks at his rise from one of the UK’s first spin doctors. Lord Mandelson’s first taste of Labour politics was his 1979 election to Lambeth Borough Council, famously where Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeny also cut his teeth working for now environment secretary Steve Reed.
However, the hard left council was led by a man dubbed “Red Ted” and so the young Mandelson stood down just three years later, disillusioned with Labour politics. After a stint in TV, he was appointed by former Labour leader Neil Kinnock as the party’s director of communications, where his status as a political heavyweight began to take shape.
