WES STREETING says Peter Mandelson “fundamentally betrayed our values.” But Mandelson helped write the values of New Labour, which Streeting and Starmer and their whole team are following.

Peter Mandelson denies wrongdoing, but the emails between him and Jeffrey Epstein look like sleazy corruption. It’s no surprise Streeting and Starmer want to put distance between him and them.

But Mandelson’s career follows the “New Labour” method he helped design: taking the side of the rich and big corporations, especially around low tax, deregulation and privatisation.

Taking favours from the rich while in office. Taking lucrative jobs working from the corporations they favoured in government when they leave office.

Squashing the Labour left who might try and stop the party being used as a launchpad for these post-ministerial corporate careers.

Mandelson’s emails expose some very dirty details in his version of this operation. Mandelson accepting osteopathy courses for his husband from a convicted sex offender might look especially weird, but it is on a continuum with Starmer and his ministers grabbing all those stupid Taylor Swift tickets, free glasses and free suits from rich men and big corporations.

Mandelson said Epstein “provided guidance to help me navigate out of the world of politics and into the world of commerce and finance.” This involved setting up a “consultancy” called Global Counsel which made him a multimillionaire by working for the corporations who benefited from the pro-business policies he made Labour take in government.

This became a basic “New Labour” pattern: when ministers stood down, many joined the private corporations they helped while in power, with ex-ministers taking jobs with privatised water companies, private security firms like G4S, arms firms and so on.

These post-ministerial careers often pay much more than actually being a minister, so Labour MPs have an incentive to push pro-business policies, even if they are wildly unpopular: Labour might haemorrhage enough working-class support to lose elections, but the ministers end up earning more in the long term.

Starmer’s government brought Mandelson back and bought into all his “New Labour” values. Even though the government is still quite new, we can already see signs that Starmer’s team will also leave government for corporate jobs, just like Mandelson.

Labour rehired one of the key Labour ministers who did this back in the day. Wes Streeting employs Alan Milburn as an adviser.

Milburn was Blair’s health secretary. When he stood down in 2004, Milburn took a job with Bridgepoint Capital, an investment firm that owned health companies: Labour started privatising the NHS under Milburn.

One Bridgepoint firm got a huge contract for private MRI scanning. They drained money from the NHS for their much-criticised MRI work. Milburn still works for Bridgepoint even while helping Streeting run the NHS.

Bridgepoint currently owns Practice Plus Group, which both runs private hospitals and other health services and does outsourced NHS work.

So far, most ministers ejected from Starmer’s government are from the “soft left” — sacked, it turns out, on the advice of Peter Mandelson. They are less prone to taking corporate jobs. However, “the project” has lost some other big figures along the way, and they are taking the Mandelson route into corporate consultancy.

As deputy leader of the Labour Party, Tom Watson did all he could to undermine Labour’s left, paving the way for the return of the right under Starmer.

Watson is now a paid adviser to Palantir, the sinister US tech company run by pro-Trump billionaires which is chasing British government contracts.

Palantir were also a client of Peter Mandelson’s consultancy Global Counsel. Watson is also an adviser to betting giant Flutter PLC and another lobbying company, Lodestone.

Claire Ainsley was Starmer’s “head of policy” until 2022. She was considered one of the slightly more leftish Starmer advisers — and hence didn’t make it to government.

However, even Ainsley is now a “senior adviser” to lobbying firm WPI Strategy. She runs their “Building Back Britain” commission were firms like Pennon Group (owners of privatised South West Water) — Microsoft and Mastercard try persuade the government that “growth” will come through deregulation or letting them influence NHS policy and so forth.

Jonathan Ashworth was the biggest member of “Team Starmer” to leave Parliament: he would have been a Cabinet minister, but lost his seat to a pro-Palestine independent in the 2024 election.

Last August Ashworth became the “UK chairman of public affairs” of lobbyists Weber Shandwick.

Their recent clients include Facebook owner Meta. Weber Shandwick said Ashworth would be “providing strategic counsel on government relations” and “helping clients navigate the ever-changing political and regulatory landscape” using his experience “as a long-standing senior member of Keir Starmer’s shadow cabinet” and “years of political experience at the highest levels of the Labour Party and government having worked in 10 Downing Street and HM Treasury. He previously served as a senior political adviser to Gordon Brown.” To me this seems like a polite version of Mandelson’s manoeuvres.

At the lower level, a number of advisers have left Team Starmer. They too have gone into corporate lobbying, giving a strong hint their ministerial bosses will do the same when they leave government.

Richard Howarth was one of Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy’s Special Advisers (Spads), having worked for the Labour Party for seven years.

Last September he left to join Tory-run lobbying company Fleetwood Strategies as a “senior director.”

Fleetwood were founded in 2020 by their boss, Tory “election guru” Isaac Levido. The Conservative election defeat meant Fleetwood badly needed Labour “insiders” like Howarth.

Fleetwood’s current clients include Airbnb, who will want to resist any Labour moves towards a “tourism tax” or limitations on the spread of their “short lets” and construction giant Balfour Beatty, who like Wes Streeting’s proposed revival of PFI-style contracts for public works.

Alex Zatman was Liz Kendall’s spad while she ran the Department for Work and Pensions.

He left last July to join “strategy and communications” consultancy Teneo, a registered lobbying firm whose clients include private water firms United Utilities (owners of North West Water) and Yorkshire Water, British Gas owner Centrica and McDonald’s burgers.

Mandelson started a process where Labour politicians treat government like an internship that opens up their careers to lucrative corporate gigs, rather than a way of delivering social reform for working people. His emails expose the ugliest details of this scheme, but Starmer’s team seem set to at least follow the broad patterns of his career path.