Peter Mandelson

Peter Benjamin Mandelson (born 21 October 1953) is a British politician for the Labour Party. He helped to found the so-called 'New Labour' with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. He was the Member of Parliament for Hartlepool from 1992-2004.

Lord Mandelson lost his job twice, once in 1998 for not declaring a loan he was given to buy a house, and once in 2001 for trying to arrange a passport for an Indian businessman who had given £1,000,000 to the Labour Party. He later made a speech claiming to have "inner steel".

After Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, he made Mandelson a Life Peer, and some newspapers have called him "the most powerful man in the Labour Party".

Mandelson is gay (he was outed in 1998 by openly gay journalist Matthew Parris),^[1] which led some to claim the UK was being run by a gay mafia.