I knew him but not well, and worry now that he thrived in our political culture. It was not just failed vetting: there was a failure of moral seriousness
• Streeting wrote off his re-election chances in WhatsApp exchanges with Mandelson
Politics has a problem with sexism and misogyny. We need to be clear what it is and why. With every scandal there is a call to clean up the system, to reform vetting procedures and the laws governing the release of sensitive information. Those are serious issues, but we will not fix the problem by starting there because the problem is not procedural. It is about culture and behaviour.
In the scandal of Peter Mandelson’s appointment to be the British ambassador to the United States, of course we need to establish the timeline of who said what, to whom and when. Gordon Brown is right to insist on a more rigorous process and a renewed commitment to the redistribution of power. But if we focus solely on what happened we will miss the important question of why it happened.
This is more than a story about the flaws of individuals and the flaws of a system. This is about culture and moral character. About how, for too long, proximity to power insulated powerful, wealthy and well-connected men from the consequences of their appalling behaviour towards women and girls. The really worrying aspect is not what took place in secret. It is what happened in plain sight. A candidate’s known association with a convicted sexual predator did not weigh heavily enough on decision-makers. And we need to think too about the silence of those who stood by, who knew enough to feel uneasy and yet did not speak loudly enough to influence the decision.
This is a group I include myself in. Contrary to what has been widely reported, I was not a close friend of Peter Mandelson, but I am not going to wash my hands of my actual association with him either. After a weekend of smear and innuendo that I have something to hide, I have decided to publish my messages with Mandelson. From these messages, people will see that the main issue I have had with their publication is that I will put some of my colleagues in a difficult position because of what I said about the Israeli government ahead of the recognition of the state of Palestine. Mandelson and I saw each other for dinner on average once a year, in a group setting. He offered advice. My partner worked for him 25 years ago and I therefore got to know him better than others of that generation in politics, a generation I have always admired since I joined the Labour party as a 15-year-old in 1998. I wasn’t involved in his appointment, but like many other people I thought it was a good move at the time. The painful truth I have spent the past few days wrestling with is that, like many others in Westminster, I just didn’t think enough about the appointment or the past that was known. Also, like many others in Westminster, I filtered the news of it entirely through the lens of whether it seemed a sensible way to help our relationship with a critical ally at a crucial moment.
Wes Streeting is health secretary
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