LONDON — British ministers and officials’ most indiscreet comments about Donald Trump will not be made public in a planned document dump to avoid prejudicing foreign relations, according to four people familiar with the process.
The U.K. government is preparing to publish several thousand e-mails, texts and WhatsApp messages between ministers, officials and Peter Mandelson — Britain’s dismissed former ambassador to the U.S. — as part of a motion agreed by parliament in February.
No. 10 Downing Street initially wanted to redact all messages that the government considered would prejudice either national security or international relations, but was forced by MPs to back down. Instead No. 10 agreed to refer such documents to parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), which will decide which details to release.
The ISC still broadly intends to redact comments that it deems prejudicial to foreign relations, said the four people, who were granted anonymity to discuss a live process. One of them said that this could include comments about a foreign head of state or information about the national security policy of another country.
Another of the four people, a government minister who was granted anonymity like others in this article to discuss a sensitive matter, said: “There has to be some way to prevent diplomatic discussions being published.”
Ministers are keen to avoid a repeat of the 2019 diplomatic row sparked by the leak of diplomatic cables in which then U.S. ambassador to Washington Kim Darroch described the first Trump administration as “inept” and “clumsy.” Darroch was forced to resign over the breach.
The ISC and the U.K. government could still disagree over whether certain messages prejudice foreign relations. Under the terms of the motion the government can argue its case, but the ISC will make the final decision.
There have also been tensions between different branches of government about the document release.
“There is a massive ongoing row between the Foreign Office and the Cabinet Office about the whole Mandelson disclosure exercise,” said a fifth person with knowledge of the process.
This person said Foreign Office officials had wanted to review messages before handing them to the Cabinet Office — which is coordinating the release on behalf of Prime Minister Keir Starmer — because of the implications on the future conduct of diplomacy. But that person said the Cabinet Office has asked for the documents from the Foreign Office without a pre-review or filter.
“It’s a classic turf war about who is in control,” they added.
Diplomatic fears
Diplomats are concerned about what could be published, with the sifting process still ongoing. A senior official, separate to the five people quoted above, pointed to the unexpected discovery that Mandelson had failed security vetting before his appointment. Starmer said he had not been informed of this.
Whitehall officials previously told POLITICO they were concerned about what Mandelson — who was sacked last September over his friendship with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — may have said about Trump to colleagues. One said that the former envoy “used to download his thoughts in real time.”
The documents that are made public are still expected to contain private musings that ministers and officials may find awkward to see in the public domain, with domestic politics and personal relationships within the U.K. government or Labour Party unlikely to be excluded.
ISC Chair Kevan Jones, a Labour peer, previously told the BBC that the committee would not withhold “embarrassing” revelations that did not jeopardize national security.
Two of the four people with knowledge of the process quoted above emphasized that the ISC, a cross-party committee of MPs and peers, has not been leaned on, and is judging whether documents prejudice foreign relations of its own volition.
They both stressed that this had been the view of the ISC all along, despite the original revolt by Labour MPs over the scope of the motion.
One Labour MP said: “There was no world in which MPs wanted to publish stuff that would prejudice foreign relations. They just didn’t trust the government, which is a damning indictment in itself.”
Starmer’s government has just over a week to publish the next batch of files relating to Mandelson before parliament ends its current session ahead of high-stakes elections on May 7. If they are not released in time, they will not be published before mid-May.
A Conservative Party spokesman said: “There is absolutely no justification for any further cover-ups. Let sunlight be the disinfectant, everything put in the open, and every document published. Anything less will rightly lead people to conclude there is more deviousness, more obfuscation, and almost certainly just result in the information being revealed later, with even more damaging consequences.”
