Writing in The Times, Mandelson said: "I am not arguing for the New Labour of Blair, Brown and Mandelson to be preserved in aspic; that would be the opposite of the revisionist instincts that lay at the root of our project. This phase of New Labour is now over, and died on 6 May 2010. But the cast of mind that new Labour represents - aspirational, reforming, in touch and that faces up to the choices power demands - must not die with it if our party is to be a serious party of government again."
"After John Smith died, I was mistaken in arguing so hard that the two modernising candidates should not oppose each other," he wrote. "I did so from the best motives. I did not want two friends to hurt each other. I did not want the modernisers' cause damaged with the risk that a split vote might let in someone else. But if we had resolved the matter there and then, we would have avoided so much of the soap opera that followed."
The Third Man: Life at the Heart of New Labour, is due to be published later this summer by Harper Press. "It will tell the story of a life played out in the back room and then on the front line of the Labour party, and in our unprecedented three terms in government," he said. "It tells it as I saw it."
Oh, Gord.
Oh, Gord.
