During his five decades in public life, Lord Mandelson has delighted in the company of many rich men.
Indeed, it was after being bewitched by his wealthy colleague Geoffrey Robinson that he had to resign from the Cabinet — on the first of two occasions he was forced to leave government.
It was no surprise, either, that as a man who was castigated by Labour colleagues when he once said he was 'intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich as long as they pay their taxes', he has happily mixed socially with financier Nat Rothschild, who arranged for him to spend a lavish weekend in the company of the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.
Peter Mandelson pictured shopping with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein
In his post-political business career, the good lord's dealings have been with wealthy contacts in Russia, China, Zimbabwe and Saudi Arabia.
This week, Peter Mandelson's moth-like attraction to the super-rich is once more under the spotlight after a photograph emerged showing him helping Jeffrey Epstein celebrate his 54th birthday.
Grinning as the now-dead paedophile blew out the candles on a giant cake, the politician had joined Epstein at his £10 million Paris apartment. The dinner celebration took place in January 2007.
The previous year, police had charged Epstein with multiple counts of unlawful sex acts with a minor — and a grand jury in Florida, returned an indictment of one count of solicitation of prostitution.
Soon after, the FBI opened an investigation into Epstein that involved multiple accusers in Florida, New York and elsewhere in the U.S.
There is no suggestion that Mandelson, then on a taxpayer-funded £200,000 salary as an EU Commissioner, knew of the court case or any of the allegations about Epstein at the time the photograph was taken.
Neither is it clear who took the picture, or how many other people were present.
Since the photo was published in a red-top tabloid on Sunday, the 68-year-old peer has so far refused to answer questions about that night in Paris.
Plus ca change, as they say in the French capital. For the man nicknamed Prince of Darkness for his canny behind-the-scenes political skills was also quiet in 2019, when I came into possession of previously unseen photographs of him shopping with Epstein in the Caribbean.
Grinning as the now-dead paedophile blew out the candles on a giant cake, the politician had joined Epstein at his £10 million Paris apartment in January 2007
Taken on December 27, 2005, and reprinted on these pages today, the most striking image showed Mandelson, wearing a Patek Philippe watch worth £21,000, accompanied by the financier, who then managed money for clients with wealth in excess of $1 billion.
Earlier that year, the first allegations of sexual abuse against Epstein were made when a woman contacted Palm Beach police, claiming her 14-year-old stepdaughter had been taken to Epstein's mansion by an older girl.
The 14-year-old was allegedly paid $300 to take her clothes off and massage Epstein.
In the photos, Epstein looks at Mandelson with a kind of proprietorial glee. In fact, the Brooklyn-born wealth manager had devoted his career to building cosy relationships with powerful men.
His friends and acquaintances included Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew and many other prominent names in entertainment, the law and politics.
As EU Trade Commissioner based in Brussels, Mandelson had huge influence. One of his responsibilities was to minimise the impact of EU-U.S. trade disputes.
I established via a close friend at the time that the shopping trip was orchestrated by Ghislaine Maxwell, whom Mandelson had first met via her father, the crooked one-time Labour MP and newspaper magnate Robert Maxwell, and regarded as an old friend.
It is said that at Robert Maxwell's 65th birthday party, Mandelson danced with the media tycoon's wife for about 90 minutes and later recalled: 'We got all hot and sweaty and it was great fun.'
As for the meeting with Epstein in the Caribbean, the friend said: 'Peter was staying on St Barts that Christmas and it's pretty close to the U.S. Virgin Islands [where Epstein's island was], so she [Ghislaine] thought it would be fun to fly Jeffrey [Epstein] out to see him in a helicopter for the day.
In the current climate the picture looks bad, but it's more poor choreography than anything sinister.'
Today, Ghislaine Maxwell is a convicted sex trafficker and Epstein, who hanged himself in prison in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges, is one of the most notorious child sex offenders in recent history.
The relationship between Mandelson and Epstein was not limited to a couple of chummy photos, though.
It spanned more than a decade and continued to blossom not only after the financier had been arrested and charged with soliciting a woman for prostitution, but after he had pleaded guilty, in 2008, to procuring a 14-year-old girl for prostitution.
There is a fourth player in this story — one who counted Mandelson, Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell as friends and who also appeared to turn a blind eye to the financier's criminal convictions.
Prince Andrew became friendly with Mandelson in the late 1990s, at around the same time both men were drawn into Epstein's orbit.
Newspapers reported in 1999 that the then Labour MP for Hartlepool had taken to dining regularly at Sunninghill Park, the Prince's home.
In 2000, both Mandelson and the Prince were witnesses at the wedding of merchant banker Sir Evelyn de Rothschild to Lynn Forester, an American broadcasting entrepreneur who was a longstanding friend of Epstein.
Around the same time, both men enjoyed separate stays at Epstein's home on Little St James, a Caribbean bolthole now known as 'Paedo Island', long before Epstein was accused of any wrongdoing.
