Thousands of pages of confidential documents tied to Peter Mandelson, the disgraced former Labour cabinet minister and UK ambassador to the U.S., have been made public, pulling back the curtain on bitter internal divides within Britain’s ruling Labour Party over the Israeli military campaign in Gaza and the recognition of a Palestinian state.
Mandelson, who was appointed to the ambassador post by Prime Minister Keir Starmer in 2024, was forced to step down from the role in September 2025 after reports of his long-standing personal ties to deceased convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein became public. It was the 1,000-plus page release of files related to Mandelson on Monday that has now revealed the intense behind-closed-doors clash between Mandelson and current UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting over Streeting’s sharp condemnation of Israeli actions in Gaza.
An independent analysis of the released files by Middle East Eye confirms that in July 2025, just two months before the UK government formally recognized Palestinian statehood, Streeting reached out to Mandelson directly to share his unvarnished views and seek input on the pending recognition decision. Streeting argued that recognizing Palestinian statehood was the correct course of action on both moral and political grounds, writing that Israel was openly committing war crimes in Gaza for the world to see. He added that Israel’s ruling leadership used rhetoric matching ethnic cleansing, and that he had spoken to British medical personnel deployed in Gaza who described systematic, deliberate brutality targeting civilian women and children.
Calling Israeli actions “rogue state behavior”, Streeting pushed for the UK to impose full state-level sanctions on Israel, writing that Israel should face consequences as an international pariah rather than only targeting a small number of extreme cabinet officials. These messages were originally released by Streeting himself earlier this year, and multiple anonymous Labour Party sources confirmed to Middle East Eye that the leak was intentionally orchestrated by Streeting to consolidate grassroots support ahead of a potential future leadership bid and increase political pressure on Starmer.
Within days of receiving Streeting’s message, Mandelson launched a scathing personal attack on the Health Secretary in private text exchanges with Pat McFadden, the UK’s current Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. Mandelson described Streeting’s message as “a wild long hysterical message” and told McFadden he had pushed back against Streeting’s claims, adding that the comments reflected poorly on Streeting’s political maturity. McFadden responded by confirming Streeting was aggressively pushing his views on the issue across WhatsApp groups for sitting Labour MPs.
Four days after that exchange, Mandelson shared a post from the U.S. State Department on X with McFadden, noting that the U.S. had rejected the upcoming UN two-state solution conference that the UK planned to attend. McFadden replied that Streeting had already circulated a set of videos and a redacted memo to the entire cabinet ahead of the conference, prompting Mandelson to dismiss the action as “pathetic” and joke that Streeting was “experiencing an early midlife crisis.”
While large portions of the released files remain redacted, the texts offer rare insight into the internal deliberations of senior British cabinet ministers in the months leading up to the UK’s formal recognition of Palestinian statehood. In a July 19 exchange, McFadden described the humanitarian situation in Gaza as heavily redacted, and added that Starmer was not inclined to support symbolic political gestures but may have no other option, suggesting that the scale of humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza left the government with little choice but to move forward with recognition.
The files also confirm that former UK Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair remained actively engaged with current cabinet ministers throughout the decision-making process. Blair had been a key figure in former U.S. President Donald Trump’s controversial Gaza Board of Peace initiative the previous year. When Mandelson asked McFadden if he had consulted Blair on Gaza, McFadden confirmed they had spoken, noting that Blair was focused on long-term solutions, including cooperation with Arab states and reform of the Palestinian Authority. Mandelson, who has long backed a two-state solution dating back to the 1970s, responded that if the party did not move carefully, the decades-long push for a two-state solution would stall entirely, recounting how previous attempts at a final agreement had collapsed due to spoilers on both sides over the past 50 years.
Earlier this year, former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn publicly released a letter he sent to Streeting, accusing Streeting of a “shameful failure” to resign from the Starmer cabinet despite his private condemnation of Israeli war crimes. In the letter, Corbyn argued that if the UK government acknowledges Israel is committing war crimes, any continued military or political support for the country amounts to the UK knowingly aiding and abetting those violations of international law.
To date, the Starmer government has only imposed sanctions on far-right Israeli cabinet ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, rejecting widespread calls to sanction the state of Israel itself. While diplomatic relations between the UK and Israel have grown strained under Labour, with the UK imposing a partial arms embargo on Israel, the Starmer government has maintained military cooperation with Israel throughout its ongoing military campaign in Gaza that has been widely described as genocide. As recently as March 2025, just months before Streeting sent his private messages, Starmer walked back comments from then-Foreign Secretary David Lammy that confirmed Israel had committed a breach of international law in Gaza.