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THE TRAIL of destruction Peter Mandelson leaves in his wake is vast. As Labour loyalists – from elected representatives to ordinary party members – queue up to denounce him, the question “what took you so long?” remains unanswered.
Mandelson’s transgressions
•Mandelson has transgressed before – and been caught out before.
In 1998, Mandelson was in Tony Blair’s Labour Cabinet, as Secretary of State for Trade & Industry. It came out that a couple of years earlier Mandelson had accepted a loan for £373,000 from Geoffrey Robinson MP, also a member of the Cabinet, which he used to buy a house. He had not put the loan on the Register of Members’ interests. Worse was the fact that his department was investigating Robinson’s business affairs. Mandelson had to resign his Cabinet position.
•Mandelson returned to the Cabinet – but in 2001 he had to resign for a second time, after allegations were made that he had tried to use his personal influence on behalf of Mr Hinduja, then one of the richest men in the world, in respect of the latter’s attempt to obtain a British passport.
In 2004, Mandelson quit the House of Commons and became one of Britain’s EU Commissioners and was appointed EU Commissioner for Trade. He ruffled some feathers politically, most notably in a spat with French President Nicolas Sarkozy – and did some ill advised sailing.
•There were reports in the press that he had spent New Year on the yacht of Paul Allen, a co-founder of Microsoft and the subject of an EU investigation.
•There were also reports that he had enjoyed a free cruise on a yacht owned by Diego Della Valle. Shortly afterwards, Mandelson introduced some tariffs on shoes imported from China. Valle owned a luxury shoe brand.
•In 2008, Mandelson spent some time on a yacht in Corfu with Canadian financier Nathaniel Rothschild and Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. The same year, he spent some time on Deripaska’s own yacht. As European Trade Commissioner, Mandelson had cut tariffs on aluminium. These benefited the second largest aluminium company in the world, United Company Rusal. The company is owned by… Oleg Deripaska. Mandelson said that there was no conflict of interest, as the two had never discussed aluminium. In 2014, Mandelson revealed that he rents a house in Wiltshire from “Nat” Rothschild.
In October 2008, Mandelson quit the EU. Gordon Brown gave him a peerage and Mandelson returned to the Labour Cabinet as Business Secretary.
Those are the highlights of Mandelson’s time in office, as a Labour politician. This all came to an end in 2010, when Labour lost the General Election and Mandelson became a consultant/lobbyist.. Fourteen years later, new Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer brought him back in from the cold and made him the UK’s Ambassador to the USA. The scandal that forced Mandelson out of this position was the discovery that he had remained a close friend of Jeffrey Epstein. It later emerged the he may have been leaking confidential and sensitive government information to Epstein.
All this has been well known and in the public eye since before Jeffrey Epstein was convicted. This makes Labour’s sudden denunciation of Mandelson look opportunistic.
Mandelson and New Labour
Mandelson meets US President Donald Trump
Mandelson’s first job in national politics was to work for Neil Kinnock. He then went on to work with Tony Blair on creating “New Labour”. This was explained as a reset for the Party which made it electable. When the Tories lost the 1997 election, New Labour seemed to have succeeded. The Blair Government was welcomed with hope and (literally, on polling night) dancing in the streets, but it all went pear-shaped as Blair embarked on a series of non-Labour policies that saw support slip away – not least the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
When she was asked what her greatest achievement was, longstanding Tory Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher named Blair, and his New Labour Government. She said she had forced her political opponents to change their policies. Mandelson once suggested ending the Labour Party’s membership structure in favour of a loose supporters network which could deliver leaflets and raise money but would have no say on deciding policy.
What Mandelson has done is disgusting on a personal level. Why would anyone want to be friends with a man convicted of soliciting sex from a 14 year old girl and trafficked and abused so many others? What made him leak government information to his mate? Mandelson has said he believed he was acting in the national interest. That is hard to believe. Many observers would allege that leaked information was his currency – the way he paid for living the high life with his rich friends.
Mandelson’s behaviour is also scandalous on a political level. He was a major force behind creating New Labour – a ruling set of politicians who believed they were above being accountable to their own party members and who sought approval from the rich and famous rather than the working class, in the UK and internationally.
New Labour lives on today. It lives on in Keir Starmer’s national leadership – and it lives on in Tower Hamlets, where the local Labour Party so firmly believes that it is entitled to govern the borough. Anyone who upsets that is malevolent and the voters keep getting it wrong – and the Labour Party has to try to thwart Mayor Lutfur Rahman as often as possible. Mandelson has a lot to answer for.
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