Calls for Scottish secretary to quit over links to Peter Mandelson

The SNP is stepping up pressure on Labour’s Douglas Alexander, insisting that the Scottish secretary must quit in the wake of documents showing his connections with former US ambassador Peter Mandelson.

Papers released earlier this week showed that Mandelson – who was sacked from the Washington posting last year over his links with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein – introduced Alexander to contacts in the Global Counsel lobbying firm he had set up.

An email sent when Alexander was a trade minister in the UK government showed him thanking Mandelson for the introduction.

SNP MSP Alex Kerr said that the former ambassador was “putting Douglas Alexander in a room with unknown individuals” – calling on the Scottish secretary to make public “exactly who he met with and exactly what was discussed”.

His concern comes after reports that Global Counsel had sought work with companies linked to both the Russian and Chinese governments, including the Russian state investment firm Rusnano and the state-owned China International Capital Corporation.

Kerr said that this now raised concerns over whether “national security has been threatened by meetings at the instruction of Peter Mandelson”.

The SNP MSP stated: “The public will be extremely concerned about who, at the behest of the disgraced Lord Mandelson, Douglas Alexander was spending his time with.”

He continued: “During Peter Mandelson’s vetting process, a significant number of red flags were raised by the security services about his relationship with a number of his clients from China and Russia.

“Now we know he was putting Douglas Alexander in a room with unknown individuals – Alexander must now explicitly tell the public exactly who he met with and exactly what was discussed.”

Kerr claimed: “Douglas Alexander was a mere puppet for his master Mandelson and these shadowy redactions just make this sinister affair all the more despicable.

“Douglas Alexander must resign and the public must be given full disclosure on whether our national security has been threatened by meetings at the instruction of Peter Mandelson.”