Mandy on Milly

Friday, 25th February 2011

Peter Mandelson’s publishers have sent me extracts from the updated paperback edition of his memoirs, The Third Man, which is out on 3 March. Here are his thoughts on Ed Miliband’s victory over David.

'It was a photo finish [and] I felt terrible for David. I felt even more worried for the party. This was not because I doubted Ed’s ability to become a strong or effective leader: he is a highly intelligent and thoughtful individual. It was because of the campaign message on which he had built his victory. It was left to Neil Kinnock, who had always found it hard to celebrate New Labour’s successes, to drive home this message. With their new leader’s triumph, he crowed, Labour’s old faithful had finally ‘got their party back’. If by that he meant our 1980s party, God only knew how, or when, we could hope to become a party of government again. Ed’s victory may have been wafer-thin, but he had played by the rules – even if the rules had ended up giving the deciding voice to union organisers, many of whose rank and file were not Labour Party members. And he had won. For lifetime Labour loyalists like me, that was all that mattered. Ed was our leader. He was my leader. I would do all I could to help make his leadership a success.'

If I understand Mr Mandelson correctly, he is saying:

1. Ed Miliband’s victory is a disaster, which will return Labour to the permanent opposition of the Kinnock years.

2. Ed Milliband is a “highly intelligent and thoughtful individual” who has his full support.

And people wonder why New Labour acquired something of a reputation for double-dealing.
By the way, I am interviewing him for Jewish Book Week on Sunday 6 March at 5pm at the Royal National Hotel in London. Tickets available here.

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Sam Armstrong

February 26th, 2011 1:13pm Report this comment

Mandelson: a shiver looking for a spine down which to crawl. I feel the need to bathe every time I see his photograph.

David Lindsay

February 27th, 2011 7:23pm Report this comment

Who cares what Old Mother Mandelson says about anything? He would still have been in the Cabinet if Cameron had won outright, as had been publicly announced months before the Election, compromising not one jot either his then Cabinet position or his Labour Party membership.

James Purnell was to have been restored to (No) Work and (Barely Any) Pensions, Andrew Adonis was to have been given his dream job of Education, and a party's acceptance of this as the permanent state of affairs was to have been built into the definition of "the Centre Ground". This was all made perfectly clear, and scarcely reported because such arrangements were no longer news.

But things did not quite turn out at instructed. Ho, hum, many of the lower-profile appointments from this fully public scheme have nevertheless been made. And many more will be. To little reportage and almost, if almost, no comment. Such things are now no more reported or commented on than the rising of the sun, and rather less so than the turning of the seasons.