In December, former UK Minister Peter Mandelson was appointed to be the UK’s ambassador to the US. Richard Johnson writes that as the first political appointee since 1977, Mandelson may appear to be an unusual choice. But, he argues, with Donald Trump now in the White House, Mandelson’s experience with political communication and the media may make him a practical and effective choice to represent the UK in Washington, DC.
- This article is part of ‘The 2024 Elections’ series curated by Peter Finn (Kingston University). The series has explored the 2024 US elections at the state and national level. If you are interested in contributing to the series, contact Peter Finn (p.finn@kingston.ac.uk).
The new British Ambassador to the United States, Lord (Peter) Mandelson, is the first political appointee in this role in nearly half a century. Conventionally, the position is held by a senior diplomat. The former UK ambassador to the EU, Sir Tim Barrow, had been expected to fill the role. Some commentators have criticised Mandelson’s appointment on the grounds that it was not ‘meritocratic’. Others worried that Mandelson, a former Labour government minister, was too partisan.
The importance of political appointees in the past
Despite these apprehensions, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s appointment of Mandelson is defensible, perhaps even laudable. Although the United Kingdom tends to appoint career diplomats to its ambassadorial posts, there have been important occasions when the United Kingdom has turned to figures with more direct political experience. These appointees have been particularly important at moments of tension in the Anglo-American relationship.
One such moment was in 1961. The late 1950s had been a low for US-UK relations, following the Suez Crisis. With the election of the new president John F Kennedy in 1960, the British prime minister Harold Macmillan saw an opportunity to reset relations. He appointed David Ormsby-Gore, a Conservative MP from Shropshire who was a personal friend of the Kennedys. The new president had made it known that he favoured his appointment.
Over the 34 months of the Kennedy presidency, Ormsby-Gore became a trusted adviser to the president, supplying Kennedy with advice, gossip, and newly embargoed Cuban cigars. Ormsby-Gore was in the Oval Office during the Cuban Missile Crisis, with Vice President Lyndon Johnson puzzling, ‘why was this Welshman even in the room’. After the president’s assassination, Ormsby-Gore made two proposals to his widow Jackie. First, he proposed that her two children use the British Ambassador’s residence for private tutoring (she accepted). Second, he proposed marriage to her (she declined).
The last political appointee to serve as British Ambassador to the United States was Peter Jay, who held the role from 1977 to 1979. Jay had been a Treasury civil servant before becoming a journalist, serving as economics editor at the Times and a television presenter. He also happened to be married to Margaret Callaghan, daughter of the Labour Prime Minister, Jim Callaghan. In spite of allegations of nepotism, Jay’s appointment was defended on the grounds of his media savvy and his reputation as ‘the cleverest young man in England’.
Jay entered Washington on a mission to address a deepening sore in UK-US relations. Over the previous decade, the IRA had been involved in brutal bombing campaigns in Northern Ireland and England, killing many civilians. The Irish-American lobby was powerful in Washington, and groups that were regarded by many as little more than front pieces for the IRA, such as NORAID, were using American affections for ‘the old country’ to fundraise for terrorism. Jay was a successful in persuading American politicians and the American public to withdraw financial support for the IRA, depleting their American funds by 75 percent.
Regardless of this achievement, when Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher entered Downing Street in 1979, she didn’t like the idea of Jim Callaghan’s son-in-law being her man in Washington. She put an end to Jay’s short but glittering diplomatic career. He was replaced by Sir Nicholas Henderson, who had been a career diplomat for 33 years – including as ambassador to Poland, West Germany and France, at the time of his posting to Washington.
“Prime Minister Keir Starmer hosts a busi” (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) by UK Prime Minister
Since then, British Ambassadors to Washington have all followed a similar pattern of distinguished and experienced career diplomats. The CV of outgoing Ambassador Karen Pierce typifies the template. She worked for many years in the Foreign Office in London and represented Britain at the United Nations in New York and Geneva, across several Asian countries, and in the United States. Before Ambassador to the United States, she had been Ambassador to Afghanistan.
A political ambassador for a political White House
Lord Mandelson, however, breaks the mould. Peter Mandelson was born into the Labour Party, the grandson of Herbert Morrison, one of the most powerful Labour figures of the mid-20th century. In the 1980s, Mandelson spearheaded Labour’s image rebrand, replacing the red flag with a red rose, signalling the party’s shift away from socialism. Elected to Parliament in 1992, he worked closely with future Labour Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in the development of ‘New Labour’. In the 1990s and 2000s, he served in several Cabinet posts. After political scandals forced two resignations, Mandelson spent four years in exile as an EU Commissioner in Brussels, before returning to be Gordon Brown’s de facto deputy prime minister in the dying days of the previous Labour government.
Foreign relations are both art and science. Expertise and deep knowledge are usually extremely valuable but so can be the kind of judgement and instinct which is refined better in the world of politics itself. As one Downing Street source put it, ‘Peter is supremely political…And this is a very political White House’. If there ever were a time for an ambassador who could see diplomacy through a politician’s eye, attentive not just to international norms but domestic political pressures, now surely is that time.
The United States, it should also be said, is very familiar with political appointees as ambassadors. Since the Second World War, over a third of US ambassadors were picked outside the diplomatic corps. Earlier in US history, there was an even higher propensity for politician-ambassadors. About half of Franklin Roosevelt’s and 80 percent of Woodrow Wilson’s ambassadorial appointees lacked diplomatic experience. Today, many US ambassadors seem to have come to the President’s attention for their skills as party fundraisers, known as the ‘donor-to-ambassador pipeline’. This is especially true for plum postings, like to London or Paris.
In the United Kingdom, Prime Ministers have tended to defer to the expertise of the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO), who prepare a list of recommended senior career diplomats for the most important appointments. This is, however, by convention rather than law. The appointment of British ambassadors remains a royal prerogative, exercised by the Prime Minister, and is unconstrained by civil service law. The Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 explicitly exempted ambassadors, along with special advisers, from civil service rules requiring that ‘selection must be on merit on the basis of fair and open competition’.
While Mandelson’s appointment may not follow civil service merit rules, there is no doubt that Mandelson has relevant diplomatic experience. He was Northern Ireland Secretary when the Good Friday Agreement was first implemented. He served as EU Trade Commissioner from 2004 to 2008. He was President of the Board of Trade in Gordon Brown’s Cabinet. In the face of trade conflict with the United States, Mandelson brings the right experience.
Having begun his career in communications, Mandelson knows how to perform in the media. As a result, he is likely to know what to say that will attract Trump’s notice. His recent comments on Ukraine, which puzzled British audiences, made sense when one thinks about his now US-based audience. To be blunt, Mandelson can do Fox News. He is also the sort of person whom Trump might find charming and interesting, with his own stories of political death and resurrection.
Peter Mandelson has more enemies that a career diplomat, but so would any good politician. His appointment is refreshingly, out of character for the UK’s risk-averse PM, who prides himself on being a rule-follower. Keir Starmer is a civil servant-turned-politician, more interested in substance than style. He does not like creating a news story where previously one had not existed. Yet, the selection of Lord Mandelson defies these instincts. While potentially riskier than a conventional diplomatic appointment, sending a media savvy politician-ambassador to Washington at this challenging moment for US leadership could prove a masterstroke by the UK Prime Minister.
- Subscribe to LSE USAPP’s email newsletter to receive a weekly article roundup.
- Please read our comments policy before commenting.
- Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, nor the London School of Economics.
