THE most reviled man in British politics slept badly on Thursday night. Peter Mandelson, the twice-disgraced ex-Cabinet minister, had been presented with an escape route from the obscurity of the backbenches, and he kept the Prime Minister waiting for an answer.
The post of European Commissioner pays three times more than the £53,000 commanded by a humble MP, and it offers the chance to swap Hartlepool for the delights of one of Europe’s most historic capital cities. It is also a job that Mandelson has been
angling for since his last exit from the government, more than three years ago.
But, while Tony Blair risked the contempt of colleagues and rivals alike for inviting his most controversial courtier back in from the cold, Mandelson insisted he needed one more night to think it over. While Mandy dithered, called friends, invoked inevitable suspicions that he was holding out for a return to the Cabinet itself, the Prime Minister was forced to abandon his plans for a reshuffle.
A week in which Blair had reclaimed the ascendancy in domestic politics and buried the lingering controversy over the war in Iraq ended with him seemingly once again at the mercy of one of his most perplexing friends.
"I know for certain that a couple of people have complained about Peter coming back, but more just said they couldn’t believe it," one Cabinet minister said of the developing drama. "I was certainly with the disbelievers - it was a case of us saying ‘you can’t be serious’. Jaw-dropping, really."
Blair was serious. Mandelson, one of the three forces behind the New Labour revolution, has been an increasingly peripheral figure since his last resignation over allegations that he pulled strings to help Indian industrialists the Hinduja brothers get British passports. Parliamentary records reveal interventions have been limited to only one speech in the House of Commons and a flurry of questions about the break-up of American vessels in the UK following a row over ghost ships transported to his constituency for dismantling. Mentions in the diary columns have also shrivelled, and the poison normally reserved for this bête noir of New Labour politics has been spread across the government. There has been persistent talk of Mandelson quitting domestic politics altogether, a notion not altogether quashed by his decision to stand at the next election, or his high-octane victory speech in the early hours of June 8, 2001. He may have proved himself "a fighter, not a quitter", but a continued estrangement from the Cabinet and a list of outside activities running to 12 speaking engagements around Britain and the world have only intensified the suspicion that Mandelson might bow out before the next election. All the more puzzling, therefore, that Blair should take the dramatic step of escorting him back into the higher echelons of politics now.
Installing Mandelson at the epicentre of one of the government’s most explosive areas of policy is, indeed, a bold move that invites trouble from within and beyond Labour’s own ranks - and from the Cabinet downwards. Glasgow Pollok MP Ian Davidson, founder of the Labour Against the Euro campaign, is already calculating the benefits. "As someone who is going to be campaigning against the European Constitution, the prospect of campaigning against Peter Mandelson running a European superstate is worth a couple of million votes at least," he said.
The gleeful endorsement of Mandelson’s return was repeated by Neil O’Brien, director of the ‘Vote No’ campaign against the European Constitution. He said: "Who better to put the case for the European Constitution in the coming referendum than a discredited politician whose name is a byword for lies and spin? He’s the perfect symbol of what people don’t like about politics today."
Yet the truth is that Mandelson, the twice-resigned, embittered exile, has never been entirely isolated from Blair’s inner circle. The trauma of the second resignation culminated in a round of furious phone calls to Blair and his spin-doctor Alastair Campbell, during which he complained bitterly that they had "swept me out in the gutter like a piece of old rubbish". The sense of injustice still burns: Mandelson’s website carries a statement from Blair’s office stating that subsequent revelations "make it clear beyond any doubt that Peter Mandelson acted entirely properly" over the passports affair.
But, within weeks of his exit, Mandelson had in any case quietly slipped back into No 10 as an unofficial personal adviser to Blair. As a daily contact, he has offered his support - and advice - during a series of political emergencies, as well as crises that blurred into the personal. During the ‘Cheriegate’ affair, where Blair’s wife was skewered over her dealings with an Australian con man, it was Mandelson who orchestrated her fightback, via a tearful public statement. In the dark days before the invasion of Iraq last year, Blair consistently turned to Mandelson and his long-term friend Anji Hunter, chiefly for support ahead of any political advice.
Most significantly, given the enhanced role he is about to assume, Mandelson has helped guide the Prime Minister’s approach to his European colleagues. In 1998, Mandelson, "who kept a close watch on German politics", urged Blair to seize upon Gerhard Schröder’s election as an opportunity to break into the Franco-German axis that had dominated the European Union for decades. Five years later, as Blair became frustrated with the Germans’ refusal to support the Anglo-American case for action against Saddam Hussein, it was his humble backbencher who complained to Schröder’s UK envoy, Thomas Matussek. John Kampfner, who has chronicled the political chicanery behind Blair’s military campaigns, said: "Mandelson, who had invested much in maintaining good links, wrote to Matussek expressing hurt and exasperation. ‘I’m at a loss with you,’ the letter began."
For a man who shamelessly declares that "my chief ideological hero is Tony Blair", the rhetoric on his website is suitably Blairite in its support for the European ideal, balanced by a summary of the EU’s problems. But Mandelson has now been charged with the task of putting his aggressive line into practice.
While the incoming Eurocrat insists he would be happy with any post, "even commissioner for paper-clips", he is in fact expected to demand a high-profile department - possibly trade. "He wants to drive home the advantage that the UK has achieved over the ‘Old’ Europeans like France and Germany since the EU expanded," one aide explained.
The logic was argued out during a summit between Blair, Gordon Brown and John Prescott at dinner in London last Sunday night. It apparently overrode any possible objection the Chancellor might have to positioning a Blairite in Europe during the ongoing row over the constitution and the euro - and possibly into a Brown premiership. Brownite aides, who have consistently complained about Mandelson’s "meddling" over European policy, and over the "economic illiteracy" underlying his enthusiastic support for the single currency, are now content. "They are realistic," one said last night. "They know Blair is in the ascendancy at the moment and he is the one with the authority to hire and fire. It also suits them to have Mandy as far away as possible, with an election on the way."
This might go some way towards explaining the acquiescence of Mandelson’s most bitter rivals, but it fails to spell out why the Prime Minister would voluntarily choose to reactivate his explosive colleague in the first place.
The fact is that the Prime Minister genuinely sees his long-term colleague as a fellow traveller, a valued guardian in his quest to modernise, first Labour and then the country itself. But it is his regret over the Hinduja affair which has transformed simple gratitude and friendship into a blood debt.
"Tony Blair is extremely loyal to his friends," explained the Prime Minister’s biographer, John Rentoul. "Mandelson is one of his closest friends and has been for a very long time."
Significantly, Rentoul added: "People ought to accept that Peter Mandelson was an outstanding Cabinet minister, dealing in a very difficult area [Northern Ireland] and developing personal relationships with people with very different views."
Stormont, therefore, was the ideal training-ground for Brussels.
"The interesting thing is that not a single person has said he isn’t up to the job," a Downing Street loyalist said last night. "He has demonstrated at every point that he is the best person for the job and that he has the skills necessary."
At 10.43am on Friday, barely half an hour after a Downing Street spokesman stiffly confirmed Mandelson’s next career move, an e-mail dropped into in-boxes around Westminster. The Liberal Democrats, a party which likes to portray itself as the most pro-European in the UK, had given its verdict on the appointment of someone who could credibly be described as a fellow-traveller, on this issue at least: "MANDELSON APPOINTMENT GIVES ANOTHER BY-ELECTION CHANCE TO LIB DEMS".
The brutal declaration confirmed the worst fears of Labour leaders fretting over Blair’s dramatic announcement before it was confirmed. Days after losing Leicester South to the Lib Dems, and narrowly clinging on to Birmingham Hodge Hill, Labour bosses had argued against the masochism of plunging the party into yet another treacherous by-election campaign.
Scotland on Sunday understands Blair’s most senior aides were so concerned about the electoral repercussions of the move that they investigated the possibility of giving Mandelson a peerage to allow them to make the announcement during the MPs’ summer break.
The tactic was described as "an abuse of democracy" when it was used to call a snap by-election during the SNP party conference after George Robertson became Nato chief five years ago.
The move betrays the panic at the highest levels of the government. There will be more to come before Mandelson’s successor is presented to parliament. Hartlepool and its infamous MP were already prize targets in 2001, when a strong field including former miners’ leader Arthur Scargill forced Labour into an all-out campaign to hold what should have been one of their safest seats. The constituency now has added totemic value and, in a one-off campaign, even Mandelson’s hard-won 14,571 majority looks vulnerable again.
Labour workers are confident they can repeat the trick, after a concerted dry run during the local elections delivered control of the town hall back from Lib Dem hands.
Tom Watson, the young Labour MP who piloted the party safely, though narrowly, through the Birmingham by-election, said the choice of candidate would be vital. "They would have to have a regional profile at least," he said, portraying the ideal candidate as "a local woman in her mid-40s with some connection with local community groups".
The developing short-list offers little hope of Watson’s ideal. Mandelson’s preferred candidate, his former aide Patrick Diamond, works in Downing Street, while ‘Robocop’, the outspoken Middlesbrough Mayor and former Hartlepool detective Ray Mallon, is understood to have been courted by Labour bosses. Whoever wins the nomination is expected to face Robert Kilroy-Silk, the ex-Labour MP who is now the UK Independence Party’s most glamorous asset.
By the time Mandelson was on the train up to Hartlepool on Friday afternoon, confirmation of his imminent departure had reached the north-east. ‘Mandelson lands top Euro job’ had replaced ‘Man bit police officer near groin’ on the front page of the Hartlepool Mail. While the MP was releasing a statement declaring that leaving the town after an association of 15 years was "agonising" and promising that "I’m not going to forget Hartlepool", the Mail was conducting its own survey. The dejection, it appears, was not mutual. "We asked 30 people whether they’d miss him," one hack explained, "and only one-and-a-half said he was any good."
