President Donald Trump, perhaps the United States’s most prominent Anglophile, had a very special gift on his wish list from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
That request almost drove the ambassador and an international team of civil servants insane before it was ultimately abandoned.
A cache of emails related to former British Ambassador to the U.S. Peter Mandelson, who is under investigation for possibly illicit dealings with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, shows the diplomat was singularly obsessed with giving Trump a custom dispatch box like those used by top officials in the U.K.
“One of the gifts that would mean the most to the President would be a red dispatch box with the gold crest and lettering mimicking a UK Government Ministerial box but with ‘President of the United States’ inscribed upon it,” Olly Robbins, then the U.K. Foreign Office’s permanent undersecretary, told his fellow civil servants in late 2025.
The “red box” or “ministerial box” is an iconic piece of hardware used by government ministers to transport sensitive documents. They are almost always bright red in color and embossed with the individual’s title and the cypher of the reigning monarch.
Acquiring and presenting the red ministerial box ended up a much more laborious task than first imagined, judging by the email exchanges.
Messages across the Atlantic describe communications “directly with the warrant holder manufacturer” approved by the Crown to create ministerial boxes — presumably the company Barrow, Hepburn & Gale. Others acknowledge attempts to “source from a different supplier.”
In his messages, Mandelson compared the process of acquiring the box to a plotline on the British political comedy The Thick of It. He described himself as maddened by the task and “going tonto” to get the custom gift crafted and presented to the president.
“We know that the box has since been put into production with a presidential seal,” an email dated Aug. 26, 2025, from civil servant David Tinline reads.
Mandelson was fired from his position the next month following revelations that he maintained a yearslong relationship with Epstein despite the financier’s conviction for procuring a minor for prostitution. The ultimate fate of Trump’s presidential red box remains unknown. During his recent state visit to the U.S., King Charles III gifted Trump with the bell from his namesake World War II submarine, HMS Trump.
Other bits of interest from the newly released documents detailing Mandelson’s tenure as ambassador included WhatsApp messages in which he describes 10 Downing Street as “beleaguered and bereft” under Starmer. He also suggested the British government ought to “become more Trumpian” in its attitudes toward political risks.
TRUMP AGREES WITH KEIR STARMER: MANDELSON WAS ‘REALLY BAD PICK’ FOR AMBASSADOR JOB
Members of Parliament will be debating the second volume of documents on Wednesday, but already, certain lawmakers are complaining that too much has been withheld from the public without sufficient explanation.
Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister Darren Jones said Monday that the second tranche, one of the largest of documents ever released by the British government, cost the Cabinet Office a whopping $1.35 million to release.