Why the Chinese Year of the Snake bodes well for Peter Mandelson

Start as you mean to go on: Peter Mandelson treads in the wake of many 2025 mea culpas flowing from people who derided America’s 47th president as a dangerous aberration, only to find that he is back and more consequential than ever. open image in gallery Mandelson and Gordon Brown at the 2009 Labour conference “Everybody knew it could not be David if it was Donald in the White House,” one member of Starmer’s close circle tells me. open image in gallery UK ambassador to the US Karen Pierce with Donald Trump in 2020 when she was made UK ambassador to the US Dame Karen Pierce, the UK’s most senior female diplomat, has held court here since 2020, and had been ambassador to the UN for three years before that so she was well known on the US “diplo circuit”. “And Peter is going to love it.” open image in gallery Mandelson in a Lotus Evora car outside the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in 2009 No one doubts that the new ambassador has the charm – and steel – to build relationships. While Mandelson stopped working for the company last year, he retains his holding – an arrangement which will invite scrutiny and “China hawks” around Trump will not let go easily.