For the past decade, Ireland has enjoyed a period of sustained influence in British political life – throughout Brexit, via Joe Biden’s Washington, now with a Corkman advising a prime minister whose instincts were forged in Northern Ireland.
But with the sacking-then-resignation of Peter Mandelson, former ambassador to the United States, this era of limited Hiberno-imperium may be about to come to a screeching halt.
Where to start with this strange diplomatic butterfly effect? Mandelson’s abstract links to financier/paedophile Jeffrey Epstein – who died in prison in 2019 – were a matter of public knowledge long before the once-New Labour minister was appointed as ambassador in 2025.
But No 10 says Mandelson failed to disclose the full extent of their friendship at the time of vetting. When a tranche of Epstein files was released last September, Mandelson was exposed and subsequently fired from his post.
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Then this week a new raft of documents arrived – this time showing Mandelson had allegedly leaked confidential information about Gordon Brown’s resignation to Epstein in 2010 and that he had told his friend about an upcoming €500 billion bailout of the euro the same year.
Next up, there is $75,000 (€63,000) Mandelson was said to have received from Epstein, which Mandelson insists he does not recall. He has since been kicked out of the British Labour Party and has resigned from the House of Lords.
No 10 is predictably defensive – they didn’t know, with full access to the facts the appointment would never have been made, this is serious, it is embarrassing, it is not strictly our fault. And all that.
But now in the harsh light of day, might Keir Starmer and his closest advisor, Morgan McSweeney, be in peril? It must take some poor judgment to appoint someone with the nickname Prince of Darkness to a posting as significant and exposing as ambassador to the US, so the critics say.
The party – especially the left of the party – might be calling for McSweeney’s head on a spike. He was a long-time protege of Mandelson and insiders say it was him who convinced Starmer round to the appointment. As pressure on McSweeney mounts there is no uncertain sense that it will have a ricochet effect on the British prime minister himself. Plenty suggest it is a fiction to think Starmer would weather the loss of his closest adviser for long at all.
But what – I hear the more circumspect readers say – has any of this got to do with Ireland’s Anglo-influence? Well, to borrow an overly used phrase, it is hard to overstate the impact Irishman McSweeney has had on the shape of the UK government.
The taciturn 49-year-old from Macroom, Co Cork, expunged the Labour Party of Corbynites, dragged it towards electability and trounced the Conservatives in 2024’s election. The No 10 chief of staff is divisive – to fans he is a “guru” and a “whisperer”, to critics he is responsible for haemorrhaging votes to the left with his rightward tilt.
Whether he survives or not, it will be hard to forget the irony that, after years in the political wilderness, it was an Irishman from a Fine Gael family that taught the Labour Party how to sound like English patriots.
But it is not just McSweeney who is responsible for this Hiberno-Labour moment. Starmer himself spent five years advising Northern Ireland’s new police force – the PSNI – in the wake of the Belfast Agreement.
His cautious, managerial instincts emerged from the febrile region as it was protecting a hard-won but by no means full-secured peace. Officials such as Starmer were there to take the hot emotion out of debate and operate with calm pragmatism. Five minutes spent watching the legalistic mind of Starmer try to run a country and you will find it hard not to see Northern Ireland flashing behind his eyes.
If they were both to go (and that is a big if) it’s probably all over for that Anglo-Irish communion behind the closed door of No 10.
But what would it matter? Who cares that the British PM’s fondness of Ireland is real and that a former GAA player rerouted the trajectory of the British Labour Party? I suppose nothing in direct and technical effect. It’s British, not Irish policy. But I think Leinster House would miss something it has yet to fully appreciate.
Over Brexit – to the discontent of the arch Tory establishment – Leo Varadkar set the terms of much of the debate; Ireland courted outsized favour in Brussels, too. And then, when the worst of that was over, Joe Biden in the White House looked on to Ireland with a romantic and patronising glint in his eye: no trade deal if you screw over my friends O’ and Mc-Whatever over the Border, he said to Westminster. With that gone, at least Dublin could boast some familiar accents and instincts in Downing Street.
Now? There are no more Brexit arguments left for Varadkar to win. And there is a hostile Donald Trump in the White House. Meanwhile, despite decent diplomatic channels in Brussels, there is an unshakeable sense that Ireland’s popularity is declining among member states as that attritional war wages all the way over in the East. That’s a lonely place to be. A friend in No 10 is no small thing in these circumstances.
