RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: You never know, by this time next year, multi-millionaire Mandelson’s white Y-fronts may be concealed by an orange jumpsuit in a Supermax prison. And it couldn’t happen to a nicer man…

There are some images you can’t take back. Last week Theresa May was undressing under the duvet in Beijing, like Harry Houdini dodging a sack, to prevent China from obtaining embarrassing nude images that could be used against her as “komromat” (indecent material).

To be fair, this was a figment of my own vivid imagination. At least as far as we know, there was no such photo.

The same cannot be said for the photo of Peter Mandelson in his dirty gray T-shirt and white panties. This took me away from my full English.

The photo was taken at the home of pedophile ‘financier’ Jeffrey Epstein, alongside a faceless woman in a white bathrobe.

Who’s that? Hotel chambermaid, underage masseuse, prostitute, private secretary? He’s not her type anyway. What does ‘Petie’ say to him? ‘Seventy-five thousand for me, another ten thousand for Reinaldo’? Your guess is as good as mine.

Was it a hidden camera? Who knows? The latest claim from Washington is that Epstein’s Lolita Express, Love Island and hot-and-cold prostitutes are KGB-financed ‘honey traps’ to dig up dirt on bankers and politicians alike.

In Mandelson’s case there was no need to collect ‘kompromat’ on him. He was always open to bidding, ready to offer himself as a specialty to the highest bidder, foreign despots.

I’m Mandy, buy me.

And as for the ridiculous ‘Prince of Darkness’ label, I’ve been telling you for years that this is a Fantasy Island affair perpetuated by Mandelson’s self-deluded arrogance and the gullible Boys and Girls in the Westminster Bubble who have built a career taking dictation from him.

When Starmer appointed him as our short-lived ambassador to the US, I warned it would sooner or later end in tears, writes Littlejohn

As the old saying goes, Mandelson’s second best friend resurfaced in the movie The Usual Suspects, starring Kevin Spacey: The greatest trick Satan ever pulled was making people believe he didn’t exist.

Still, whenever Petie delivers a vicious shot, he’s there in all his glory, pants around his ankles and a smoking gun in his hand, as the team rounds the corner. This last photo is the living roof.

The mystery is how he got away with it for so long. When Starmer appointed him as our short-lived US ambassador, I warned it would eventually end in tears.

Mandelson’s career has been a catalog of car accidents, hypocrisy, scandal and self-enrichment. He has the survival instincts of a post-apocalyptic cockroach and the unique ability to absorb a host of gullible do-gooders, Starmer’s latest dupe. He describes himself as a Machiavellian figure, but as I once described him, he is more like Shakespeare’s Iago, played by Kenneth Williams.

But unlike Carry On star Williams, Mandelson is a much more disreputable character; although he emerges, like Williams as Julius Caesar in Carry On Cleo, saying: ‘Infamy, infamy, they’re all after me.’

He repeatedly accuses critics like me of ‘homophobia’ to distract attention from his greed and bad behavior. It’s obvious they were cobblers. I didn’t even care about his sexuality. I had flagged him as wrong 40-odd years ago, when I was a young industry reporter and he was a newly appointed, bare-faced Press Officer liar to then Labor leader Neil Kinnock. I knew next to nothing about his sexual proclivities.

Recently, he used the ‘gay’ excuse to pretend he was unaware that Epstein was exploiting young women. But playing the gay card won’t get him out of prison this time. There’s actually a reasonable argument for why he should have gone to prison years ago.

Littlejohn writes Mandelson continues his trend of fawning over wealthy philanthropists

His first discredit came after he applied for a fake mortgage to buy a house he couldn’t afford in trendy Notting Hill, with the help of a huge loan from Labor sugar daddy Geoffrey Robinson. Somehow he walked away from it but if it had been anyone else he would almost certainly have drawn the fraud team’s attention. Moreover, he was retaining a profit of £250,000 when he had to sell.

He continued his trend of fawning over wealthy benefactors. Blair sent him to the EU as trade commissioner after he was forced to resign from the Cabinet for a second time over the arrangement of British passports for foreign donors; here he accepted special flights and free holidays from a Russian aluminum baron and then, quite by accident, lowered import duties on Russian aluminum.

After enjoying himself on a yacht owned by financier Nat Rothschild, he came to the defense of hedge funds. After immersing himself up to his skinny neck in the hospitality of Tinseltown movie mogul David Geffen, he announced a crackdown on video piracy on the internet.

As I wrote here in 2009, Gordon Brown, a fundamentally honest man, panicked, returning him to the Cabinet and elevating him to the peerage: ‘Lord Mandelson’s screaming represents everything rotten about our so-called democracy – arrogance, cynical disdain for the paying public, institutionalized dishonesty, an exaggerated sense of entitlement and a complete absence of shame.’

Where he got £8 million to buy a house in Regent’s Park (now estimated to be worth £20 million plus) is one of the enduring mysteries of our time. But the truth will come out.

The latest document dump from the Epstein files alleges that Mandelson leaked confidential, sensitive Government information to American bankers while acting as Gordon’s de facto deputy Prime Minister.

He advised the boss of financial giant JP Morgan (JPM) to ‘threaten’ the then British Chancellor Alistair Darling over his plans to impose heavy tax increases on bankers’ bonuses. He was also ‘consulting’ another finance company, Lazard, for £1 million a year.

He also leaked a sensitive UK Government document, when Epstein was Business Secretary, proposing £20bn of asset sales and outlining Labour’s tax policy plans. An email sent in May 2010 shows Mandelson informing Epstein that a major financial announcement was to be made, with European governments preparing to approve a 500 billion euro deal to save the euro.

Clearly, Mandelson was using his political position to fill his own boots. He apparently admitted as much in an email to Epstein on Christmas Day 2010:

‘I don’t want to live on salary alone. So I need to do as much as possible to compile with JPM.’

Even so, despite losing £8 million on the mansion in Regent’s Park, at the same time her then-Brazilian boyfriend (now husband) Reinaldo was begging Epstein for $10,000 for an osteopathy course. As our American cousins ​​say, go figure it out.

For the last 40 years, Mandelson has been hiding in plain sight. His mistakes and greedy appetite for other people’s money were obvious enough for anyone with half a brain to observe. But still, for God knows what reasons, powerful men continued to spoil her.

Starmer must now regret sending her to Washington – but he also made Nonce Finder General Tom Watson his life partner, which tells you everything you need to know about the Prime Minister’s decision.

Now perhaps the wheels have completely fallen off Mandelson. He left the Labor Party and, with any luck, will be deprived of the rank he does not deserve.

His ridiculous excuses won’t work anymore. How can he claim that he ‘doesn’t remember’ receiving $75,000 from Epstein? This is as ridiculous as another noble Labor Party member, ‘Lord’ Hermer, pretending not to remember how much he was paid to represent Gerry Adams.

He may have fooled the fraud team with a fake mortgage application he submitted years ago. But if allegations that Mandelson leaked confidential, sensitive government information to American bankers while in government are true, authorities may not be so forgiving this time. We are talking about possible insider trading here.

An SNP MP has already reported him to the police. Gordon Brown is fuming at the news of Mandelson’s betrayal.

He is also wanted for questioning by the US Senate, which tends to be a little tougher in its inquiries than the sympathetic House of Commons committee that is bought and paid for, and criminal charges may well follow.

You never know, this time next year Rodney, multimillionaire Mandelson’s white Y-front might be lurking in an orange jumpsuit somewhere in Central America, in a Supermax prison in Omaha. This is an image I would be happy not to see. It couldn’t have happened to a better man.

Put your pants on, Petie, you’re injured…