The United Kingdom’s Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, dismissed the nation’s ambassador to the United States, Peter Mandelson, on Thursday due to his connections with Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender.

In an announcement made in the House of Commons, Stephen Doughty, a Foreign Office minister, stated that the dismissal followed the recent revelation of emails from the 2000s that Mandelson had sent to Epstein.

“Based on new details contained in Peter Mandelson’s emails, the Prime Minister has requested the foreign secretary to remove him from his role as the ambassador to the United States,” remarked Doughty.

He noted that Mandelson’s suggestion that Epstein’s first conviction was “wrongful and should be challenged” was new information.

The Sun newspaper on Wednesday released emails indicating that Mandelson had encouraged Epstein to “fight for early release,” just before Epstein received an 18-month prison sentence.

“I think the world of you,” Mandelson told him before he began his sentence for soliciting prostitution from a minor in June 2008.

Doughty highlighted that the emails revealed a “significantly deeper” nature of Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein than what was understood at the time of his ambassador appointment last year after the Labour Party’s election win. Mandelson started his ambassadorial duty this past February.

These communications were disclosed by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, who presented a 50th birthday album from 2003 belonging to Epstein, a wealthy financier with notable connections at that time. Within the album, Mandelson referred to Epstein as “my best pal” in a personal note.

The decision to fire Mandelson comes just a day after Starmer said he had “confidence” in the country’s ambassador to the United States.

Epstein took his own life in prison in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges, more than a decade after his conviction.

A skilled political operator, Mandelson is no stranger to controversy, having twice resigned from former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government in 1998 and 2001.

He subsequently became a European Commissioner when Britain was still in the European Union, before returning to front line British politics in 2008 to serve under Blair’s successor, Gordon Brown.

Starmer considered Mandelson’s trade experience in the EU as vital in helping to limit the scale of tariffs imposed on the import of British goods into the U.S.