Mandelson's plea to Blair for a fresh chance
His efforts were rewarded when Mr Blair appointed him to the plum post of Britain's commissioner on the European Commission in Brussels with responsibility for trade.
Mr Mandelson was forced to quit as Northern Ireland secretary in January 2001 following claims he had helped the controversial Indian businessman Srichand Hinduja secure a UK passport in return for sponsoring the Millennium Dome.
Although an official inquiry cleared him of any impropriety, Mr Blair was reluctant to bring his old friend back into the fold after he had already resigned once before in a scandal over an undeclared home loan from fellow Labour minister Geoffrey Robinson.
In April 2003, however, Lord Birt – who was serving as a senior policy adviser in No 10 – wrote to the prime minister urging him to think again.
'I gather from Peter that you still talk to him regularly – but, as a safeguard, you may like to know what he reports to me about his current state of mind,' he wrote.
'He feels this spring/summer may be the moment of decision for him. He's approaching 50 – and he is sorely conscious that time is passing and he has yet to fulfil his promise.
'As you know, Peter's deepest wish is to return to government. He stresses that he has already proved to be a capable minister, and that he would be a strong ally for you in cabinet.
'If you judge a return to government is not possible, then he would like you to consider appointing him as EC Commissioner.
'One way or another, he says he wants to settle his future this year, even if it means a career outside politics.'
Just four months later, it was announced that he was to be the UK's next European commissioner. He was subsequently awarded a life peerage in 2008 and is currently the British Ambassador to the United States.
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BBC News
11 minutes ago
- BBC News
Iran drives out 1.5 million Afghans, with some branded spies for Israel
Ali Ahmad's eyes fill with tears as he lifts his shirt to show deep bruises across his he was detained, Iranian officers struck him and accused him of spying, he says. "They used hoses, water pipes and wooden boards to beat me. They treated us like animals."He was speaking to the BBC earlier this month at Islam Qala on the two countries' border, before crossing back over to Afghanistan. His name has been changed to protect his - which says it hosts more than four million undocumented Afghans who fled conflict in their homeland - has been stepping up deportations for months. In March those without papers were given a July deadline to depart voluntarily, but since a brief war with Israel in June, the authorities have forcibly returned hundreds of thousands of Afghans, alleging national security returns peaked at about 50,000 people in early July, according to the United Nations – often after arduous Ahmad says Iranian officials confiscated his money and phone and left him without "a single penny to travel back". He'd lived in Iran for two and a half years. 'Scapegoats' Iran's crackdown has coincided with widespread accusations linking Afghans to Israel's intelligence agency Mossad, including Iranian media reports that cite police sources claiming some individuals were arrested for espionage."We're afraid to go anywhere, constantly worried that we might be labelled as spies," one person, who wished to remain anonymous, told BBC News Afghan."You Afghans are spies", "You work for Israel" or "You build drones in your homes", are other frequent accusations, according to this Rubin, an expert on Afghanistan who served as senior adviser to the US Department of State, says Tehran may be "looking for scapegoats" for its shortcomings in the war against Israel."The Iranian government is very embarrassed by their security failures", which show Iran "was very thoroughly penetrated by Israeli intelligence", he says."So they had to find someone to blame."Critics also say the accusations of espionage are aimed at buying legitimacy for the government's plan to deport undocumented BBC attempted to contact the Iranian government but did not receive a response. The return of Afghan refugees "without tension and with respect for human rights… is a goal pursued at all levels", the state-backed Islamic Republic News Agency said on 18 July. 'Four days, like four years' Abdullah Rezaee, whose name has also been changed, has a similar story to Ali the detention centre where he was held, about 15 Iranian officers physically harmed him and other deportees, Abdullah told the BBC at Islam Qala."Iranian police tore up my visa and passport and beat me severely. They accused me of being a spy." Abdullah says he'd only been in Iran two months before being detained, despite having a visa."They beat us with plastic batons and said: 'You're a spy, you're ruining our country'."The four days he was detained "felt like four years". He describes constant mistreatment, physical abuse and lack of online allegations of collaboration between Afghans and Israeli secret services started early in the 13 June, the day Israel attacked Iranian nuclear and military facilities, the government issued statements to the population, asking citizens to report suspicious activities such as unusual movements of vans, which might be transporting Israeli operatives' Telegram channels with large followings posted warning messages using similar wording to the government's. But they added that the population should be vigilant of "alien citizens" – an expression mostly used to describe Afghans in Iran – driving vans in big following day, a series of detentions of people allegedly connected to the Israeli attacks, including some Afghans, were 16 June, news channels broadcast a video of Afghans being detained claiming that they had been carrying drones with them. It went viral. But the video was old, and portrayed migrants detained due to their undocumented 18 June, a Telegram group attributed to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps posted that 18 Afghans had been arrested in the city of Mashhad for building drones for Israel, according to the independent monitoring group Afghan following day, the provincial deputy security chief was quoted saying the arrest had "no connection to drone-making" or co-operation with Israel. "They were arrested solely for being in Iran illegally."But posts connecting the arrests to espionage had spread widely on social media platforms. A hashtag saying the "expulsion of Afghans is a national demand" was shared more than 200,000 times on X in the space of a month, peaking at more than 20,000 mentions on 2 sentiment on Iranian social media is not new, but the difference this time is "the misinformation is not just coming from social media users but from Iranian-affiliated media", according to an independent researcher at Afghan Witness. From 'serial killers' to 'spies' More than 1.5 million Afghans have left Iran since January, according to the UN Refugee Agency. A spokesperson from the Taliban's Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation told the BBC that more than 918,000 Afghans entered Afghanistan from Iran between 22 June - 22 had been in Iran for of Afghans have fled to Iran and Pakistan since the 1970s, with major waves during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and more recently in 2021, when the Taliban returned to warn Afghanistan lacks the capacity to absorb the growing number of nationals forcibly returned to a country under Taliban rule. The country is already struggling with a large influx of returnees from Pakistan, which is also forcing hundreds of thousands of Afghans to first, Afghans were welcomed in Iran, says Dr Khadija Abbasi, who specialises in forced displacement at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. But anti-Afghan sentiment increased gradually, with state media portraying Afghan refugees as an "economic burden" to society, she narratives about Afghan migrants in Iran followed suit. In the 1990s, a series of rapes and murders in Tehran was widely assumed, without evidence, to be the work of an Afghan, which led to a rise in hate crimes. It was later revealed that the killer was an estimated two million Afghans migrated to Iran in the post-2021 wave, exaggerated posts on social media claimed more than 10 million Afghans were living in the country. Iran had been the only neighbour to allow refugees and migrants to enter at scale during that of Afghans from Iran, says Dr Abbasi, "might be one of the very rare topics that most Iranians" are in agreement with the government – although in July more than 1,300 Iranian and Afghan activists signed an open letter calling for an end to "inhumane" treatment of Afghan citizens in anti-Afghan sentiment is widespread. "It has become very dangerous," she says, "so people will just try to stay at home."For huge numbers that is no longer an option. The border continues to swell with Abdullah the deportation has destroyed his plans."I lost everything," he Babrak Ehsas, Yasin Rasouli, Rowan Ings, and Sucheera Maguire, with additional reporting by Soroush Pakzad
The Guardian
14 minutes ago
- The Guardian
The Guardian view on Trump's tariffs: both a political and an economic threat
Donald Trump's 1 August tariffs deadline did what it was always intended to do. It kept the markets and the nations guessing amid last-minute uncertainty. It attempted to reassert the global heft of the United States economy to take on and master all comers. And it placed President Trump at the centre of the media story, where he always insists on being. In the event, there were some last-minute agreements struck this week, few of them fair or rational in trade terms, most of them motivated by the desire to generate some commercial order. Some conflicts are still in the balance. There were 11th-hour court challenges too, disputing the president's very right to play the trade war game in this way. Even now, no one, probably including Mr Trump himself, knows whether this is his administration's last word on US tariffs. Almost certainly not. That's because Mr Trump's love of tariffs is always more about the assertion of political clout rather than economic power. Mr Trump's antipathy towards the European Union drives one example. The pact agreed by Ursula von der Leyen in Scotland last weekend underlines that the EU's aspirations as a global economic superpower exceed its actual clout. The EU could not prevent Mr Trump making European goods 15% more expensive if they sell on US markets. Nor could it stop Mr Trump getting EU tariffs on US goods withdrawn. Equally eloquent about the global balance of economic power is that Mr Trump has not been able to force China to bend the knee in the manner of the EU. China has responded aggressively to Trump's tariff threats, retaliating with tariffs of its own and blocking the sale of commodities, including rare-earth minerals, that the US most covets. Unsurprisingly, this standoff has not produced one of Mr Trump's so-called deals. Friday's deadline has been reset for later in the month. It would be no surprise if it was eventually pushed back further. Mr Trump is not imposing tariffs on the rest of the world in order to promote global trade or even to boost the US economy. He is doing it, in part, because Congress has delegated this power to him, allowing the president to impose or waive tariffs at will. He uses this power for many purposes. These include raising government income without congressional oversight and also, because tariffs are regressive, shifting the tax burden away from the very rich, like Mr Trump himself, on to the middle and working class. But economics also comes way down the field in the list of reasons why Mr Trump is wielding the tariff weapon internationally. US talks with Brazil – with which the US runs a trade surplus, not a deficit – have been hijacked by Mr Trump's grievance over the prosecution of its former president Jair Bolsonaro for trying to overturn his 2022 election defeat. Talks with India are deadlocked because Mr Trump wants to penalise Delhi for buying energy and weapons from Russia. Those with Canada have been hit by Mr Trump's objections to Ottawa's plan to recognise Palestine. The ultimate test of the policy, however, will indeed be economic. For now, financial markets appear to have decided that Mr Trump's tariffs are manageable. If tariffs now raise the cost of goods on US high streets, slowing growth and feeding inflation, as they may, the wider market response could change quickly. In that event, the mood among American voters might even shift too. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Scottish Sun
an hour ago
- Scottish Sun
Fury as number of foreign sex offenders & violent criminals jailed in England and Wales hits record high
Foreign nationals also make up a staggering percentage of those charged with sex attacks in London over the last seven years FOREIGN CONS UP Fury as number of foreign sex offenders & violent criminals jailed in England and Wales hits record high Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) THE NUMBER of foreign sex and violent offenders locked up in England and Wales has soared to record highs, damning new data reveals. Official figures show 1,731 foreign-national sex offenders were in prison in June - up nearly 10 per cent in a year and almost three times the rate of British offenders. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 2 'They need to be kicked out of the country immediately. Starmer must suspend visas and aid until countries take back their nationals', says Robert Jenrick Credit: PA Violent foreign inmates hit 3,250 - the highest since records began - with an 8.8 per cent annual rise, nearly double the 4.8 per cent for UK nationals. Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick said: 'Instead of releasing criminals early to free up prison space, the Government must deport every single one of these foreign offenders. "They need to be kicked out of the country immediately. Starmer must suspend visas and aid until countries take back their nationals.' Albanians remain the largest foreign nationality in UK prisons, with 1,193 behind bars - many for drug offences. Poles, Romanians and Irish make up the next biggest groups, followed by Lithuanians and Jamaicans. Foreign nationals now account for more than one in 10 sex offenders and violent criminals in custody, and one in five drug offenders. The new figures, published by the Ministry of Justice, follow months of pressure for greater transparency on the nationality of offenders. Some of the protests at asylum hotels have been sparked by alleged sex attacks by migrants. The Sun also recently revealed that four in ten people charged over sex attacks in London in the last seven years were foreign nationals. Police figures showed these migrants were behind 2,809 of the 7,798 alleged crimes recorded in the capital since 2018 - despite making up less than a quarter of the city's population. Manchester Police Raids smash down doors in early morning raids on postal drug dealers
