“I was not involved in the process of appointing Peter Mandelson, and if I had been, I would have argued very strongly against it,” Anneliese Dodds immediately told the New Statesman on 11 February.
Dodds said she had concerns about Mandelson’s probity even before knowing about the links between him and the convicted child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. “I felt he was a clear blackmail risk because of his behavior in the past that had indicated a focus on money rather than on public values and principles,” she said.
We met in Dodds’ office in Portcullis House, where she apologised for being three minutes late from her previous appointment in the Palace of Westminster. The space has been restructured to create more offices, leaving the wood-panelled corridor from the lift feeling narrow and claustrophobic. At one point we hear the hacking cough of a nearby occupant through the walls. It was a few hours after it was reported that Sir Chris Wormald, the cabinet secretary, would likely leave his role (confirmed two days later), which itself following the departure of Keir Starmer’s communications director Tim Allan, and chief of staff Morgan McSweeney the day before Allan. The fallout from the Mandelson Affair is still making its way through the Labour Party and British politics, and Dodds knew I would ask her about it.
After Mandelson’s appointment as Ambassador to the United States, Dodds says she was “extremely disappointed”.
“We do need to see transparency, and we need to see mindset change,” she said, expressing her frustration about the overwhelming focus on the various connections between powerful men compared to why the suffering of women and girls abused by Epstein were not taken into account at the time of Mandelson’s appointment.
Dodds, the member of parliament for Oxford East, is an unusual politician in that she will actually answer your question. In a culture where seemingly everyone in public life has been trained to answer the question they wish they were being asked, it’s refreshing to find someone willing to be direct – and polite. At one point during our interview I put a statement to her about the UK’s “punitive” (my word) approach to asylum seekers, and Dodds replied: “I do view current circumstances quite differently” before setting out her thoughts on the matter.
We spoke on the same day, perhaps at the same time, that women Labour parliamentarians led by Harriet Harman demanded that Keir Starmer appoint a woman deputy to break the boys’ club and “transform the political culture”.
When I asked Dodds what transparency looks like to her, she said she wants to see change in how decisions are made by governments. “They grab the headlines that appear audacious, that relies on decision making by a very small number of people. It means there’s less accountability,” she said. That may seem like a rare veiled criticism of the Starmer government, but Dodds had already caveated her answer: she said the same applied to other governments.
Dodds also highlighted the record number of women, black and minority ethnic MPs in the current intake. “Their voices need to be heard and MPs with a whole variety of different personal experiences, and we need to make sure that leads to a change in politics,” she said. Her argument is that if people feel “planet politics” does not reflect their lives, it leaves the door open to pretenders, such as Nigel Farage.
When we arranged our interview, we had a different set of bros in mind: Tech Bros. Dodds is concerned about the economic and political power wielded by this small group of unaccountable (predominantly) right-wing American men.
“We’re seeing, of course, different different outcomes of the lack of control across many different areas of society and policy areas,” she said, highlighting that three million pornographic images were generated by Grok in a mere 11 days, “acting after the fact is far too late. The harm had already been done.”
Dodds is aware of the potential for new technologies such as AI to transform our lives, advance science, and address global challenges such as climate change, but argues that all that depends on “collective oversight and control and management of the deployment of these technologies.” However, some of these technologies are already in the wild, she admits, citing the example of young people looking for work and being turned away by AIs without the chance to interact with a person. “We have to have a conscious political response to it, to support people through this transition and to again, make sure technology is deployed appropriately.”
This includes public services, where AI is already being used by civil servants. “I believe there needs to be that kind of transparency more generally, and a clear awareness around where AI will be useful and where it won’t be,” she said, giving the example of a Ministry of Justice pilot scheme to link records across their systems with a clear purpose and transparency. However, Dodds believes the key relationship will always be better the citizen and the person delivering the service, not the technology. “ If you don’t have any humans in the system or any human accountability, that could quite rapidly reduce people’s confidence in public services.”
But is the widespread acceptance across government of using AI tools in public services dangerous? Are Labour letting the Tech Bros in by the back door and eroding British sovereignty? Dodds responded there need “appropriate guardrails” on the use of AI with a “medium to longer term goal” to have greater sovereignty, working with “like minded countries” particularly those inside the EU. “None of these issues are easy. You can’t wave a silver wand and suddenly create chip factories and all of the infrastructure needed to develop that sovereignty overnight,” she added.
The other geopolitical problem for this approach is Donald Trump, who has backed his Tech Bros in disputes with Europe over regulation of their platforms. Dodds said she believes that, as with Grok, a coalition can be assembled across the public and politicians to challenge the power of the platforms and bring them into line. “Many of these platforms now have either monopolistic or quasi monopolistic features. They should expect to be subject to public regulation as a result,” she said.
Dodds is also currently unique in Labour; the only member of the Starmer government to resign over a disagreement over policy, when the UK’s foreign aid budget was cut in order to fund an increase in military spending in February 2025. She has consistently stuck by her conviction that it was the wrong decision to cut aid. Now she argues that the aid budget can and should play a role in upholding security.
“[Aid] must, for the UK, play a role In foreign policy which overall reflects our national interests,” she said, adding that she advocates for a “Rules Britannia approach” that supports multilateral institutions and the rule of law, including international humanitarian law.
“I think that approach is actually a very hard headed one, and it’s probably the only route that we can take, because, we’re not in a world now where, for example, the UK’s economy is bigger than China’s, where we can somehow dominate through economic might.”
Dodds also makes the case that aid can be used to address the root causes of why people are compelled to migrate across borders. “People don’t want to be forced to leave home. And I believe the UK should be working with other countries so that we can deal with some of those, those push factors.”
When I broached the treatment of asylum seekers, including the increasingly punitive policies towards them in Britain brought forward by the current Home Secretary, Dodds said it was is a matter of ensuring that decisions on cases are processed quickly. “I believe the government is right to try and grip on to these problems, I believe in doing so they’re responding to public concerns about the competence of public services to deal with those challenges. I believe the government is trying to go about it in a way that reflects our values.”
As the fall out from the Mandelson Affair continues, there are rumours of a reshuffle in the air around Westminster. I have heard that “soft left” Tribune Group MPs are pushing a Cabinet shake-upas a way for Starmer to end the infighting that has engulfed the party for months now. Would that mean a return to the Cabinet for Dodds? She told me that she’s not been asked to rejoin the government. “I am enjoying being a backbench MP,” she says with a smile.
[Further reading: Pity the Labour staffers]
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