Matthew Dancona

The price of Mandelson’s support

The cover piece in the new issue of the magazine is by my former opposite number at the New Statesman, John Kampfner, and is a defining addition to our knowledge of the crucial 48 hours in which Gordon Brown’s fate was decided earlier this month. As the polls for the local and European elections closed at 10pm on Thursday June 4, James Purnell announced that he was resigning from the Cabinet. David Miliband has since revealed in a Guardian interview that he considered quitting, too, but that he had “made my decision [not to] on Thursday” – and that Peter Mandelson was critical to that decision. “I’m not going to go into [our conversation],” Miliband said, “but we didn’t sort of talk about the weather.”

In the days that followed, as Brown’s reshuffle was completed (just), it became clear that Mandelson had effectively saved Brown’s premiership: an outcome that Mandelson himself admitted to the Telegraph on June 13 was “almost unimaginable rather than just simply ironic”. The question is: why? We know that his department was souped up and that he was given the fancy new title of First Secretary of State, making him – in all but name – the Deputy Prime Minister.

What John reveals, however, is that the deal brokered by Mandelson in those make-or-break hours was very specific:

Not known until now is one vital part of their negotiation. Mandelson – on Blair’s behalf – set down specific conditions for the Iraq war inquiry. The deal, I am told, was explicit. Not only would the hearings be fully in private, but that the committee would, as with Hutton, be manageable. Brown was instructed to ensure that the members of the inquiry would, in the words of one official “not stir the horses”.

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