The rise and ruin of Peter Mandelson

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Poor Peter Mandelson. I feel sorry for him. After all, someone has to, apart from the man himself. The great historian Macaulay wrote, ‘We know of no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality’ – in this case, as it often is, exacerbated by prurience. I have known Peter for over 40 years, and we were colleagues on Weekend World, the Brian Walden television programme. One day, my phone rang. It had just been announced that Peter was to take over as the Labour Party’s head of communications, and Norman Tebbit, then the Tory Chairman, was on the line. He asked me what manner of man Mandelson was, and did we have to take him seriously.

I will not exaggerate my powers of prophecy. I did not say that within ten years, Peter and his friends Tony Blair and Philip Gould would have seized control of the Labour Party, grabbed it by the scruff of the neck, taken every tradition and policy that could have alienated swing voters and chucked them all in the nearest skip. The result would be a formidable election-winning machine, as it proved. I merely told Norman that Peter was likeable and able, and would give Labour a much better communications outfit than they had enjoyed since just after 1945. So it also proved.

Peter was effective, as he was at everything he did, though there were occasional outbreaks of arrogance. Just after Labour’s victory in 1997, a junior minister in the Lords came into the Tory Lords’ Whips office looking sheepish. Officials do not always provide Lords’ junior ministers with a blue riband service and thanks to a civil servant’s error, he had just given a factually incorrect answer in the Chamber. As befits a House which is not only noble, but gentlemanly, the Tories put him at his ease. He was not to worry: these things happen. All he needed to do was apologise the next day and give the right answer. Looking relieved, he departed, to return half an hour later with a hang-dog expression on his face. ‘What’s plan B?’ he asked. ‘Why do you need one?’ ‘Because Mandelson has decreed that we are never to apologise to the Tories, ever, for anything.’ Perhaps Peter realised that he would eventually need the entire quota of apologies for himself.

That was untypical behaviour. Some Labour figures, forced by the pragmatism of government to make truces with reality, compensate by claiming to dislike Tories and are reluctant to socialise with them. That was never true of Peter. It helped, of course, that compromises came easily to him; he was never over-burdened with views. There had been a brief early left-wing phase (the same was true of me). But thereafter, it was never clear what he actually believed. His grandfather, Herbert Morrison, famously declared that socialism is what a Labour government does. That ambiguity creates plenty of scope for compromises. Peter was tribal Labour: he was also committed to being in power. He would roll those two syllables around his palate, savouring them.

Yet although Peter had been born into the Labour Party, it never took him to its bosom. The suspicions that many of the comrades felt for the Blairites were frequently trained on Mandelson. He was the archetypical king’s evil councillor: often an early focal point for rebellion. Tony Blair used to say that one of his tasks was to teach the Labour Party to love Peter Mandelson. That was never more than a work in progress. All progress has now ceased, surely for ever.

Peter’s social tastes did not gel with the comrades. He clearly enjoyed loucheness and glamour. Rupert Murdoch once described him as a ‘star-fucker’: not a compliment. But he was an effective minister. On entering any minister’s private office, one can always sense the atmosphere. The one around Peter conveyed confidence, diligence and efficiency. Those who were working for hm obviously enjoyed doing so. He had no difficulty in earning their respect.

Then there were problems. Geoffrey Robinson, before he became Postmaster General, had lent Peter money to help buy a house. There had been a breach of the rules, but hardly a serious one. The building society knew that its money was safe. The transaction was leaked by a supporter of Gordon Brown. Having formerly been a Brown acolyte, Peter decided in the early 1990s that Tony Blair would be better at winning elections. That judgement was increasingly widely shared, but not, oddly enough, by Gordon Brown himself. Brown was always good at nursing a grudge to keep it warm and he did not forgive Peter, until he needed him at the end of the noughties. 

Recalled to the colours much earlier than that, Peter ran into more trouble, over the Hindujas. He had helped those Indian plutocrats with visas and passports. In this case, the master spinner’s skills let him down. All he needed to say was that as far as he knew, the Hindujas were eminently respectable businessmen who wanted to invest in this country and create jobs. if he had been wrong about them, so were Margaret Thatcher, Paddy Ashdown and plenty of other senior figures. He was happy to put all the relevant papers in the House of Commons library. That ought to have exculpated him, as the eventual enquiry did. Instead, he gave the impression of being shifty and prevaricatory. Tony Blair, deciding that Peter must be guilty of wrongdoing, sacked him. Understandably. Peter felt hurt and betrayed.

But he had another resurrection, via the EU commission, the Brown Cabinet – and finally, the Washington Embassy. At the time, I thought that the latter was an excellent choice. The main and vital duty of a British Ambassador at the Court of King Donald is to have excellent relations with the ruler. I always thought that Peter would do that well, and so it proved, until Jeffrey Epstein’s doings came back to haunt his associates.

Among the hysteria, let us address a basic question. What exactly did Peter do wrong? We can reasonably exculpate him of sexual malarkey. He obviously enjoyed extensive hospitality, and then made a career-ending mistake. He wrote lots of effusive thank-you emails. These are far too gushing for restrained, buttoned-up British tastes. They are mawkish and embarrassing, so much so that Peter probably had to go, even if Donald Trump might not have minded.

Yet counsel for the defence has one small point to put. When Epstein’s troubles began, Peter’s first reaction was to stand by his friend. A determined critic might claim that he was afraid of being blackmailed. But the very tone of the emails suggests otherwise. There is no hint of caution or calculation. Peter appears to have been genuinely sorry for his host and friend. As he himself says, he was taken in by a charismatic criminal liar.

The theoreticians of tragedy often cite the tragic flaw: the quality which eventually destroys the hero. Macbeth’s vaulting ambition is a prime example. In Peter Mandelson’s case it was his readiness to be seduced by some of the louche ultra-rich, who offered him the glamour which he relished: the ‘star-fucking’ which Murdoch identified. Dazzled by glitz, he saw no need to examine its provenance. But he is a much better and more serious man than the current headlines would suggest. He has done some service to the state, not least in Washington. I hope that he has good friends who will now stand by him: as, in an infinitely worse cause, he stood by Jeffrey Epstein. 

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