The Warning Signs Were There: Brash, Mandelson, and the Epstein Questions in Plain Sight..

The image was taken at a Labour Sponsored Event for a number of Candidates in November 2023, one of those being Jonathan Brash, the now Labour MP for Hartlepool

Labour MP Jonathan Brash 'Celebrated' Mandelson’s Return to Hartlepool back in 2023 to Support His Election Campaign— Critics Immediately Raised Epstein Concerns...

4th Feb 2026

When Jonathan Brash publicly celebrated a visit from Peter Mandelson to Hartlepool in November 2023, he did so in the most deliberate way possible: a proud, promotional message on X (then commonly still called Twitter), accompanied by photographs from what he described as a “packed Labour Party fundraiser”.

Delighted to Welcome Mr. Mandelson Back to Hartlepool, despite a cloud of controversy surrounding his links to Jefferey Epstein

In the post, dated 25 November 2023, Brash wrote that he was “delighted to welcome Peter Mandelson back to Hartlepool” and explicitly thanked Arden Strategies for sponsoring the event, alongside a roll-call of figures he said attended the event, including Chair of the Labour Party Anna Turley, Joe Dancey (the Partner of Labour MP Wes Streeting), Matt Storey (The Police & Crime Commissioner for Teesside), Chris McEwan and Alex Cunningham, the former Labour MP for Stockton North.

But the reaction beneath the celebratory messaging exposed a political vulnerability that was already well-established by 2023: Mandelson’s long-reported association with Jeffrey Epstein. Months earlier, major reporting had highlighted a bank report describing Epstein as appearing to maintain a “particularly close relationship” with Peter Mandelson.

Alongside Mr Mandelson, Jonathan Brash's wife Pamela Hargreaves was present, someone who now holds not only the leadership of Hartlepool Borough Council, but a lucrative chair position on the Towns Private Development Corporation HDC

So when Brash chose to platform Mandelson — in Hartlepool, no less — social media users did what they invariably do in the age of receipts and search bars: they challenged it in public, and they challenged it instantly. Some replies, preserved by users who followed the thread at the time, were framed as direct questions that read less like heckling and more like warnings about reputational fallout. One asked: “Did you take the opportunity to ask him about his friendship with Epstein??” Another sarcastically suggested that awkward topics were being sidestepped: “I assume … his close friendship with Jeffrey Epstein were taboo subjects??” Others opted for blunt political labelling — “Labour’s Friend of Epstein” — or pressed the point by invoking Mandelson’s earlier ministerial controversies, asking whether this was “the friend of Epstein who was twice forced to resign from the cabinet”.

What can be reported — because it's exactly what unfolded in the public thread — is that Brash was put on notice, in real time, that many voters and observers associate Mandelson with Epstein and viewed that connection as disqualifying.

The thread shows that, for those critics, the issue was not obscure, not technical, and not newly discovered. It was, in their words, something Brash would have likely known about & should have confronted before choosing to “welcome” Mandelson, thank sponsors, and treat the evening as a straightforward political photo opportunity.

And that's the central point for readers living in Hartlepool now looking back at the 2023 post: whatever Brash’s private view of Mandelson, the public warning lights were flashing in his replies at the time. Yet the message he chose to broadcast was one simply of endorsement and celebration, with named guests, a named sponsor, and no acknowledgement at all of the Epstein questions that—by then—were already a matter of record in national reporting.

Mr Brash appeared on GB News this week to publicly distance himself from Mr Mandelson, insisting once again that he had no knowledge of any dealings between Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein. However, many argue that Mandelson’s long & perhaps 'turbulent' career has been defined by political networking and the trading of influence & favours at the highest levels of the Labour Party, and they point to Brash’s own past actions as difficult to square with his claimed ignorance.

Many have cited what's been previously described as the “Pink Paper Fix” in 2009, which Brash used to help secure Peter Mandelson the honorary Freeman of the Borough of Hartlepool—at a time when questions had been raised about Mandelson’s wider associations—and suggest it strains credibility that Brash would have remained completely unaware of the controversy.

The inference drawn by those is that Brash deliberately chose to overlook reputational warning signs because Mandelson was seen as politically useful: a figure to whom a favour was owed after the 2009 freeman of the borough of Hartlepool episode and, in their view, someone capable of opening doors that would later aid Brash’s eventual election campaign in Hartlepool.