Met police suggest Number 10 lied about Mandelson emails

The latest batch of Peter Mandelson’s emails proved to be less explosive than expected. While they certainly told us more about what we already knew, they didn’t tell us much else. This is why the real controversy ended up being what wasn’t there.

Downing Street would later claim the Met asked the government to hold back certain messages. Now, the Met have disputed this claim.

Starmer and McSweeney's project is a governance nightmare addicted to dishonesty. The glaring, unmitigated conflicts of interest re: Palantir are scandalous. As I wrote in the preface to The Fraud: this is a lawless and reckless project that threatens British democracy. https://t.co/UTEfIgq4Ev

— The Fraud (@StarmertheFraud) June 6, 2026

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Mandelson — Missing messages

The above post from Dan Hodges reads:

* Downing Street briefed journalists the messages relating to the 5 September reshuffle had been withheld at the request of the Metropolitan Police. But today the Met have told the Mail on Sunday this is untrue, and they did not ask for the messages to be held back

* Two of the unpublished messages from Mandelson to McSweeney reportedly relate to Darren Jones and Peter Kyle. Both of them were subsequently promoted in that reshuffle

As Jody McIntyre reported for the Canary:

Despite his “stolen phone” account, McSweeney had stated when questioned by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee on April 28th that text messages he had received from Mandelson would be included in the files. In one newly-released exchange, Mandelson confirms that he is talking to McSweeney “a lot”, but further detail of their correspondence is notably missing.

In other words, it looks like we’re witnessing a cover up of a cover up.

Of the missing messages, there is some hope we might see them. With other messages, though, they’re seemingly gone for good.

As we also learned this week, Starmer had his phone set to routinely delete messages. According to him, this was within guidelines. We can’t confirm this, of course, because the messages no longer exist to check – demonstrating why deleting messages should be illegal for government ministers.

Palantir

Hodges also reported:

* On 27 February Mandelson accompanied Keir Starmer to a meeting at the Washington offices of Palantir. No minutes were kept of the meeting, and it was not included in Starmer’s official schedule. The Mail on Sunday has learnt that a week after Starmer returned from Washington Cabinet Ministers received an instruction from No.10 to meet with Palantir representatives.

The latest Mandelson emails provided further evidence that Mandelson was working to connect his former client Palantir to his then-boss Keir Starmer. The UK has awarded Palantir NHS contracts despite it being a controversial defence and spyware contractor with links to a genocide. It continues to win other contracts too, as Joe Glenton reported for the Canary on 5 June:

This time the genocide-linked company’s software will manage guns, explosives, and even poisons held by the British state. The news comes as the UK’s tech committee urged the government to pull the plug on Palantir’s takeover of vast areas of UK infrastructure.

Missing inaction

As Hodges also asked:

Very simple question that now needs to be answered. Downing Street have claimed the Mandelson/McSweeney messages were withheld at the request of the Metropolitan Police. The Met say this isn’t true. So who’s lying. And why haven’t the messages been published.

Given that both the Met and Starmer are notoriously dishonest, this may not be an easy question to answer.

Featured image via WPA Pool (Getty Images) / Leon Neal (Getty Images)

By Willem Moore

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