Hartlepool Labour MP's Office Manager Caught Up In Mandelson Controversy After Leaked Message
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Peter Mandelson Portrait ‘Welcome Gift’ to Labour MP staffer Sparks Fresh Questions about the towns Labour Group In Hartlepool...
6th May 2026
A Labour Party staffer working for Hartlepool MP Jonathan Brash has been dragged into the growing Peter Mandelson controversy, after a leaked WhatsApp image began circulating online.
The image, which appears to have been posted under the name “Jonathan Brash”, shows Local Labour figure Anth Frain standing in Hartlepool holding a large framed photograph of the disgraced former Hartlepool MP Peter Mandelson.
The caption attached to the image reads:
“New office manager starts Monday – welcome gift.”
Mr Frain is understood to work in Jonathan Brash’s Constituency in York Road Hartlepool when he was handed the job back in May 2025 and has also been involved in promoting a number of Labour candidates in the upcoming May 2026 Local elections, placing him as one of the closest members to the centre of the town’s current Labour campaigning operation.
Its claimed the emergence of the leaked messages has sparked fresh political embarrassment for Labour locally just days before locals are set to go to the polls, with Labour widely tipped to see heavy losses in Hartlepool tomorrow.
Mandelson, one of the most controversial political figures ever associated with Hartlepool, has remained a divisive name in the town long after his time as MP, with the latest leaked image raising questions over whether Labour figures in Hartlepool ever truly moved on from the Mandelson era — or whether his influence still lingers behind the scenes.
The controversy is particularly awkward for Hartlepool Labour MP Jonathan Brash because critics have previously claimed that his political links to Peter Mandelson stretch back more than 20 years, including to the row locally known as the “pink paper scandal”, a scandal that centred on the handling of matters connected to Peter Mandelson’s Freedom of the Borough award back in 2009 when Jonathan Brash was the Leader of Hartlepool Borough Council, with questions having long been raised locally about the level of political support he received from within Hartlepool Labour circles since then.
Now, with a Brash office staffer pictured holding what appears to be a beautifully framed portrait of Mandelson as a “welcome gift” just weeks before bombshell revelations were revealed about Mandelson's links to the disgraced Paedophile financier Jefferey Epstein, opponents are likely to argue that the image speaks volumes about the toxic culture going on inside the Labour MP’s operation & that Brash's bid to 'disassociate' himself from Peter Mandelson was in fact smoke & mirrors..
The revelation comes at a time when Labour candidates are being actively promoted across Hartlepool by Mr Frain himself, with the image likely to become yet another distraction for a local party already facing some significant questions over its internal links, political judgment, and its continued association with controversial figures from the town’s past, with the bigger question being why Peter Mandelson remains such a prominent symbolic figure inside Hartlepool Labour circles at all.
The leaked image also places Mr Frain under much unwanted scrutiny. As someone working for the town’s Labour MP while also helping promote a number of Labour candidates locally, his appearance in the image has inevitably pulled him into a row which Labour would likely rather avoid. For Mr Brash, the matter raises further questions about his judgment. Having previously sought to distance himself from Mandelson politically, the circulation of an image apparently showing a Mandelson portrait being handed to a staff member as a welcome gift risks undermining that position.
Either way, the message has ensured that the Peter Mandelson scandal has once again landed on Jonathan Brash’s doorstep — this time through one of his own staff members.
