His father George Norman Mandelson (known as Tony) was the advertising manager of The Jewish Chronicle[9] who served as a commissioned officer in the Royal Dragoons during the Second World War.

[10] On his mother's side, Mandelson is a grandson of Herbert Morrison,[11] the London County Council leader and a Labour Cabinet minister in the Attlee government.

[5] In 1966, he appeared on stage with the local amateur theatre group, the Hampstead Garden Suburb Dramatic Society, as the eponymous lead in The Winslow Boy.

[23] For the 1987 general election campaign, Mandelson commissioned film director Hugh Hudson, whose Chariots of Fire (1981) had won an Oscar as Best Picture, to make a party political broadcast promoting Neil Kinnock as a potential prime minister.

[30] In 1994, Kate Garvey suggested that Mandelson (who was at the time being derided by the trades unions and other Labour factions), should adopt a nom de guerre throughout Blair's leadership bid, so that he might conceal his considerable role within the campaign team.

A few months later, he also acquired responsibility for the Millennium Dome, after Blair decided to go ahead with the project despite the opposition of most of the Cabinet (including the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport who had been running it).

[35] In July 1998, Mandelson was appointed to the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and was sworn of the Privy Council; he launched the Millennium Bug And Electronic Commerce Bill and a Competitiveness White paper, which he described, as 'bold, far reaching and absolutely necessary'.

[43][44] He had contacted Home Office Minister Mike O'Brien on behalf of Srichand Hinduja, an Indian businessman who was seeking British citizenship and whose family firm was to become the main sponsor of the "Faith Zone" in the Millennium Dome.

"[48] Despite Labour success at the June 2001 general election, a third Cabinet appointment did not materialise and Mandelson indicated his interest in becoming the United Kingdom's European Commissioner when the new Commission was established in 2004.

It was claimed by Christopher Hope of The Daily Telegraph in 2009 that Mandelson's pension was contingent on a "duty of loyalty to the Communities", which also applied after his term in office.

[52] The TaxPayers' Alliance, which was reported to have uncovered the threat to his pension, demanded that he should declare the conflict of interest and either relinquish his EU pay cheques or resign as a minister.

"When one considers that his new ministerial post deals specifically with business, enterprise and regulatory reform – all areas that are intimately involved with EU legislation, regulation and policy –" the group said, "the conflict of interest is even more stark."

[53] On 3 October 2008, as part of Gordon Brown's Cabinet reshuffle it was announced, amid some controversy,[54][55] that Mandelson would return to Government in the re-designated post of Business Secretary and would be raised to the peerage,[56] thus becoming a member of the House of Lords.

[67] The Independent reported that according to their Whitehall sources, Mandelson was persuaded that tough laws were needed to reduce online copyright infringement following an intensive lobbying campaign by influential people in the music and film industry.

Mandelson's spokesperson claimed that there had been no discussion of internet piracy during the Corfu dinner and suggested that the decision to reverse Lord Carter's findings had been taken in late July before the trip.

The Times reported after the Corfu meeting that an unnamed Whitehall source had confirmed that before this trip, Mandelson had shown little personal interest in the Digital Britain agenda, which has been ongoing for several years.

[70] An opinion poll conducted by the centre-left think tank Compass found in March 2009 that Mandelson was less disliked by Labour Party members than Deputy Leader Harriet Harman.

In November 2010, Mandelson and Benjamin Wegg-Prosser founded Global Counsel, a lobbying firm based in London, with the financial support of WPP, the advertising giant.

[79] As a corporate lobbyist, he personally helped clients such as Shein, Shell, Palantir, Alibaba, TikTok, and the UK private water industry obtain meetings with ministers and senior officials.

It was then speculated that Lord Mandelson's name might be put forward to succeed Pascal Lamy as Director-General of the World Trade Organization, backed by David Cameron.

[88][89][90] In 2013, Lord Mandelson was appointed to the revived post of High Steward of Hull, an ancient ceremonial position held by his grandfather Herbert Morrison in 1956–65 and defunct since 1974.

He proceeded to lobby governments around the world for the role,[101] arguing that the WTO had "reached a fork in the road" and had to be "picked up and put back on its feet".

[104] In 2021, it was reported that Mandelson had been advising Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer on moving the party beyond Corbyn's leadership and broadening its electoral appeal.

[105] Mandelson is one of the stars of the weekly podcast How To Win An Election from The Times, presented by Matt Chorley and alongside Polly Mackenzie and Danny Finkelstein.

[109][110][111] Peter Mandelson had previously described President Donald Trump as "little short of a white nationalist and racist,"[21] "reckless and a danger to the world" and likened him to "a bully".

[5] Sarkozy accused him of trying to sell out European farmers and appeared to blame his handling of the Doha round of trade talks for the "no" vote in the Irish referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon.

[122] News of the contacts sparked criticism because, as European Union Trade Commissioner, Mandelson had been responsible for two decisions to cut aluminium tariffs that had benefited Deripaska's United Company Rusal.

[137] During his time in government, the press – tabloid and broadsheet alike – often portrayed Mandelson as effeminate through "the linguistic resources of camp" and narcissistic – sometimes including coded references to homosexual acts in their descriptions of his actions.

[138] Having lived in London with Reinaldo Avila da Silva FCIL, a Brazilian translator, since March 1998,[139] Lord Mandelson wed his partner on 28 October 2023.

[137] An internal investigation later found that the photos had been obtained without Avila da Silva's consent and images of him attempting to cover his face had been secretly deleted.