Lord Mandelson, the former Labour cabinet minister and creator of New Labour, claims he was used and tripped up by Gordon Brown's henchmen for 10 years as he fought to make the relationship between Brown and Tony Blair work in government. He also reveals he hopes to return to front-line politics at some point for Labour, but has no immediate job and believes his book The Third Man, to be published next week, could contain useful advice for the next leader of the Labour party before he or she is elected. Mandelson continues to insist he will not be endorsing any candidate, and even gives limited praise to his old combatant Ed Balls.
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The book does not reveal anything about his private life but does go into detailed analysis of what he sees as his own failure – as seen by others including friends such as Lord Gould – to integrate the different aspects of his personality, including his charm and his coldness. The book portrays Blair as weak in handling Brown, and suggests Brown himself was sometimes unhinged.
In an interview with the Times, Mandelson says he does not agree with that description. "Tony comes across as someone who had to spend too much of his time and had to devote too much of his energy dealing with this insurgency from next door – but kept his calm and maintained a sort of real sense of purpose as prime minister and delivered right to the very end a good, sound, strong new Labour government. "In the case of Gordon, he goes through three phases: pre-'94; '94 to 2007 and 2007 to 2010. And the middle period, as I recount in the book, was awful. That was when he [Brown] kept saying to me: 'Why are we doing this to each other? We've killed each other. It's no fun. It doesn't make being a minister any more enjoyable – you know, we've got to stop it.' But no sooner had he said that to me then we'd be off again in the same sort of cycle."
He says Brown was very badly served. "The unbridled contempt that some people around Gordon had for Tony and those who worked for him was very destructive. They were constantly winding him up – partly because that's what they felt, partly because that's what they thought he wanted to hear". Asked how he responded to the efforts to undermine him, Mandelson says: "I'll tell you what I felt. I felt that I'm not being allowed to do my job. I'm being tripped up by Gordon and his people and it's not right, and I'm getting the blame for it. That isn't fair."
Asked whether it was his role to take the blame for things he says in a sense it was, adding: "For it to go on for, sort of, 10 years was a bit …" Then he says: "I don't think I've got anything to be bitter about any more." But he then admits he felt he was being used.Discussing David Cameron, he says: "I think he's actually rather a good politician – but he is excessively political in a sense. He has values but he doesn't have a set of fixed, political beliefs that flow from a particular political outlook or philosophy."
Asked what the immediate future holds for him, Mandelson suggests: "I want to be able to contribute to my party's welfare and its success, and in one way or another I will do that until my dying day. But in the meantime, of course, I will also have to earn a living." If there was another Labour government, I would like to be considered for membership of it. That's why I've taken the trouble of writing a book, with an introduction and an epilogue, but also a lot of experience and lessons through that time that I've been in politics which I want people to understand." He insists: "I don't hate Ed Balls. I've got to know him quite well over the last two years, and he is a person of strong views, tough analysis and he has a forceful personality. But that's what you want in a leader."
the Guardian
the Guardian
