Peter Mandelson sent serving Cabinet ministers links generated through a tracking service while running a behind-the-scenes Labour campaign, newly released government documents reveal. The former ambassador to the US was working to secure a Labour victory in the Oxford University Chancellor election when he sent out links created using Grabify, an online service that creates trackable URLs capable of recording information such as a user's IP address and other technical data before redirecting them to the intended destination.
The same tracking link was sent to some of the most senior figures in government, including Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood, pensions minister Torsten Bell, Labour Party chair Ellie Reeves and Foreign Office minister Stephen Doughty. The messages form hundreds of pages of WhatsApp exchanges, emails and official correspondence released following a House of Commons Humble Address relating to Mandelson's appointment and subsequent departure as Britain's ambassador to Washington.
The documents show Mandelson orchestrating a get-out-the-vote operation throughout the summer and autumn of 2024. He was at the time still chairman of lobbying and advisory firm Global Counsel, and months away from his ambassadorial appointment. He urged ministers to register to vote, recruit other Oxford graduates and circulate campaign messages through alumni networks. In one message, recipients were asked to forward the registration link to 'at least five graduates you know who would back a progressive candidate' and to share it with any alumni groups they belonged to.
The campaign was framed in explicitly political terms. 'The Chancellor has almost always been a Conservative party politician,' Mandelson wrote. 'Now that voting is online we have our first real shot for a Labour figure to win.' Later messages warned supporters about 'William Hague's extensive campaign organisation backed by CCHQ'.
But the most striking detail is what happened to the registration link itself. On August 3, 2024, Mandelson sent Torsten Bell the genuine Oxford University registration page hosted on the university's JISC survey platform. Two weeks later, in a follow-up message thanking supporters for registering, the official university link had disappeared. In its place was a Grabify link containing the identifier 'OPKKPP' - directing users to the same Oxford registration form, but via a trackable third-party URL first. The same pattern appears in the messages to Shabana Mahmood and Stephen Doughty, who was sent the official university link on August 3 before receiving the Grabify version days later.
Kevin Walker, founder of Black Swan Cyber Security Solutions, said that while Grabify isn't 'inherently malicious' its tools can make tracking available to 'almost anyone with little technical knowledge'. He added: 'The tool itself is not inherently malicious. Similar technologies are used across the internet for analytics, troubleshooting and marketing purposes. The difference is that Grabify makes this type of tracking accessible to almost anyone with little technical knowledge.'
