We need to talk about Dame Karen Pierce – the midlife woman pushed out of her job for Peter Mandelson

In all the furore about Peter Mandelson, there is a glaring omission. Oh yes, I know THAT picture in the white Y-fronts is unforgivable (as is the handing over of confidential information to hostile operators in the middle of the banking crisis). But in all the fuss, there is a huge elephant in the room that nobody is talking about.

The truth is, Peter Mandelson never needed to be appointed ambassador to Washington in the first place. We already had a brilliant midlife woman doing the job. Her name was Karen Pierce, and before Mandelson ever got to the American capital, she had been hailed as “The Trump Whisperer” because of her excellent relationship with the president. In all the fuss, please spare a thought for the amazing Dame Karen Pierce DCMG, a career diplomat with a superb record, who was flung out of the job she loved so that Mandelson could have her gig.

Pierce, 66, was a roaring success as our woman in Washington. She was a Foreign Office lifer who’d already done two tours in the US capital, having already wowed everyone as the top British diplomat at the UN – including Donald Trump, who described her as “fab”. Long before Mandy fawned into the picture, Pierce was already well known in diplomatic circles as the woman with a rapport with Trump. The morning after Trump was elected, Pierce posted a picture of herself with the Donald in an orange dress (appropriately matching his fake tan) in the Oval Office.

When Starmer came to power, the media were full of praise for Pierce, hailing her as a secret weapon because of her “adeptness at the delicate art of handling Trump”. She got the newly fledged PM Starmer a one-on-one call with Trump just after he survived his assassination attempt. The call, which was supposed to be short, morphed into a two-hour dinner meeting. When David Lammy got into trouble with old tweets showing he’d called Trump a neo-Nazi, it was Pierce who steadied the ship and got the special relationship back on track. Indeed, the basis of the unlikely semi bromance between Starmer and the Donald was Pierce. And fat thanks she got for that!

The chaos over Mandelson is of Starmer’s and his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney’s making. Pierce’s jolly midlife style found her at ease with Trump, her vivacious, bubbly personality winning him over, and her steely but silky diplomatic skills paving the way for a new era of the special relationship. But as so often happens to extremely capable older women in a man’s world, all Pierce’s hard work was sacrificed on the altar of installing one of the boys.

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It’s a story as old as the hills: sixtysomething professional woman kicked out in favour of a male boss’s crony. McSweeney admits to being a protege of Mandelson. Maybe that’s why he totally overlooked the fact that his beloved mentor had already had to resign twice from public life in disgrace… and that the man formerly known as Lord Mandelson is actually entirely unsuited to high office.

This current Mandelson scandal is a self-inflicted wound for Starmer and his coterie, born of not having enough trust in a midlife woman. Shame on them. I can’t see Pierce being photographed in her undies in a paedophile’s lair – or in any other compromising position. I doubt she would lie while being vetted by the civil service, or conveniently “forget” having received $75,000 from a man like Epstein.

I hope McSweeney is now ruing the day he overlooked the fact that Mandelson had a terrible penchant for sliming up to billionaires. Mandy may be a great political strategist, but he has no personal integrity and no sense of where to draw the line between his own self-advancement and the national interest.

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How did Starmer and McSweeney ever think he would do better than Pierce? Why install a man with such a chequered history into such a crucial job, at such an important time, when there was a brilliant woman already in place?

I have seen this exact scenario play out: a competent, experienced midlife woman kicked out because some man decides that other men would rather deal with a chap like them. It’s 2026 – when are we finally going to tackle the gendered ageism which is killing off female careers just when they should be flourishing?

Note to our male leaders: if a woman has got to the top of her profession, she is likely to be way better than any of her male counterparts; she has to be, because it is still so damn hard and rare to get there. The corridors of power are still a blokes’ club, which is where women run into trouble. You see, by the time we’ve accrued 30 years of experience and high office, we reckon we’ve earned the right to speak truth to power.

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Hell, Pierce might even have dared to disagree with Starmer or McSweeney; she might have had a different – better – perspective. Maybe given her more than three decades in the job, the fact that she had been COO of the Foreign Office in London, served in Afghanistan as well as Washington twice, she knew a few tricks that the chaps back in London didn’t… No matter. Pierce didn’t look like one of the boys. She is diminutive and cherubic; similar in style to Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles. She was famous in Washington for her sparkly headbands, parties fuelled by rocket-strength Pimm’s and ability to get on with everyone.

Perhaps the only ones who didn’t see her worth were the grey, dreary chaps who currently rule the Downing Street bubble. I’ve heard so many women MPs moaning about the “boys’ club” around Starmer and McSweeney. And so it came to pass that Pierce, who had managed to get Trump on side and get him and Starmer off to a flying start, was sacrificed for the odious Mandelson.

And where is Dame Karen Pierce now? Soon after leaving Washington, she was named as the UK’s special envoy to the western Balkans – I suppose it was the closest the boys could get her to Outer Siberia.

Eleanor Mills is the Founder of NOON.org.uk – the UK’s premier network for midlife women and the author of ‘Much More to Come: Lessons on the Mayhem and Magnificence of Midlife’, published by HarperCollins