Status Anxiety | 11 October 2008

I cannot help feeling a certain affinity with Peter Mandelson. Like me, he has been given a number of high-profile jobs, only to lose them in slightly dubious circumstances. Yet somehow he always manages to bounce back. He is the political equivalent of a Weeble: no matter how near he comes to toppling over, he ends up righting himself. This has led me to formulate the Mandelson/Young Guide to Failing Upwards:

1. Cultivate a reputation for being clever. No matter how often you screw up, if people believe you possess some special talent, they will always consider employing you. In Mandelson’s case, the fact that he is widely thought to possess an almost supernatural ability to win general elections has been key to his political resurrection.

2. Be as obnoxious as possible. This will enable you to blame your career setbacks on the fact that you are an unpolished, plain-speaking man, rather than wholly incompetence. (Mandelson: ‘I can play hardball. People like to discredit me because they fear me.’)

3. Try to be charming occasionally. Given your reputation for rudeness, people will be completely bowled over if you take the trouble to charm them — much more so than if they are chatted up by someone who is routinely charming like Nicholas Coleridge. It will make them feel special, as if they have some unique quality that has enabled them to tame the beast. (See Gill Hornby’s piece in Tuesday’s Telegraph in which she described Mandelson as ‘a complete poppet’.)

4. Do not worry if people try to paint you as a lying, scheming, Machiavellian opportunist. This can work to your advantage. As Lyndon Johnson said about J. Edgar Hoover, it is better to have some people inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.