'Who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others': Labour minister's bleak assessment of backbenchers released
Labour's Pat McFadden bleated to Lord Mandelson about the attitude of backbenchers - saying his colleagues were only concerned with who they could tax to fund benefits hikes.
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McFadden, speaking to the disgraced former ambassador, said: "Every meeting I have is 'who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others'. They're asking the wrong questions."
The messages date to when he was serving as a Cabinet Office minister, and he has since taken on the welfare brief as Work and Pensions Secretary.
A spokesperson for McFadden said: "Pat has said publicly many times that the question we should ask is not what are you entitled to, but how can we change your life?
"That has been his whole approach as work and pensions secretary, focusing on how we best spread work and opportunities to young people in particular, rather than writing them off as the previous government did."
Read more: Key texts, emails and WhatsApps from latest dump of Mandelson files
The tranche of messages released on Monday also saw Mandelson saying Keir Starmer "lacks verve" and the Government needs more "panache" in a damning takedown.
The brutal slating of the PM was laid bare as hundreds of files related to Mandelson's appointment as the UK’s ambassador to the US were released by the Government on Monday.
In another exchange, he said of Downing Street: "It is beleaguered and bereft. It requires complete revamp and infusion of purpose and confidence to get anywhere."
It came after Labour suffered poor results in local elections last May.
Mandelson wrote: "It stems from the top and Keir lacks verve as does the Cabinet as a whole. People’s heads are broadly in the right place but you need more people who can execute.
“I have a feeling that Keir is now consistently going for direction B. His recanting on his immigration speech, on welfare, now Gaza. There is definitely a “let Keir be Keir” trend."
Paraphrasing Morgan McSweeney, then Sir Keir’s Chief of Staff, Mandelson said: “This is what Morgan senses and so it is particularly acute for him. His view from when Keir first stood is that the cycle has been the same, advance/buckle/advance/buckle.”
In another exchange with McFadden in May 2025, days after Reform took the seat of Runcorn from Labour in a by-election, Mandelson said: "Morgan was so confident on Thursday night of having won Runcorn. The problem is the government doesn't give a sense of crusading to turn round and change Britain. That's what I mean by panache, verve. It does start right from the top..."
Mandelson also said that former Prime Minister Gordon Brown had lost faith in Starmer and his Chancellor Rachel Reeves.
He warned the Parliamentary Labour Party was in a “mutinous state”, and warned that Angela Rayner was seen as an “instrument of destabilisation”.
Mandelson wrote to McFadden in July 2025: “I have spoken to Morgan a lot this week and last night I was direct with him - Keir is not leading from the front and Morgan is not organising the centre as it needs to be Gordon has it in for Keir(and Rachel) big time. He doesn’t seriously believe that Angela is an alternative but she is an instrument of destabilization. I doubt he thinks Ed is fit for purpose, but he is doing to Keir what he has always done to successive Scottish leaders.”
The messages are among thousands of previously classified documents and personal WhatsApp messages exchanged by the former ambassador with senior figures in Government.
They were published following orders from the House of Commons in the wake of revelations about Lord Mandelson’s ties to paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Lord Mandelson stepped down as US ambassador after the ties emerged but MPs forced the government to release the documents to show why and how he first came to be appointed.
Downing Street said the disclosure is an “unprecedented piece of Government transparency”.
They also revealed that Mandelson penned a handwritten note to then-foreign secretary David Lammy on 18 November 2024 - a month before he was appointed US ambassador.
"If you were minded to appoint me, I would make sure you never regret it," he wrote in the letter.
He added: "I fear that navigating Britain's interests through the Trump administration will require super-human skills and luck and a massive team effort.
"There is so much riding on it, on security and defence, on trade and economy and on EU relationship, not to mention China."He later wrote it would be the "last thing I do in public life and it would be a huge honour" to be in the role.
But little has emerged about how Mandelson was hired despite failing his security vetting.
Previous files released earlier this year laid bare damning communications between Mandelson and Epstein.
Mandelson denied any wrongdoing over his relationship with the disgraced financier and has issued an apology to Epstein's victims.