Cabinet minister Lord Mandelson described it as a “Blair plus” manifesto and denied Mr Brown had had to be converted to his predecessor’s public service reforms: “He invented New Labour with Tony Blair and myself and others.” -12 April 2010

Peter Mandelson has waded into the Labour leadership contest by criticising Ed Miliband for producing a “crowd-pleasing Guardianista” general election manifesto – 19 September 2010

I’m not sure which himself his Lordship prefers, but I think both of them will succeed in pushing people towards Ed Miliband. He’s worked wonders for Ken Livingstone’s campaign already.

It’s precisely tired, overexposed and evidently confused figures like Mr Mandelson we need to see a bit less of in the Labour Party. Clear the decks, start fresh. Move on.

UPDATE: Former Compass Youth Chair, poet and renaissance man David Floyd points out via facebook that:

“What Peter Mandelson amusingly calls a ‘crowd-pleasing Guardianista’ manifesto did not gain the support of The Guardian at the last general election. They backed the Liberal Democrats.”

I would also add that as well as failing to please the Guardian, it also failed to please the crowd, which by definition is rather larger than the Graun’s readership…

One thought on “Mandelson, which Mandelson?”

  1. I remember Mandy at the Conference I went to, you know you get these people that will catch onto something and they are like flies to sh*t, well thats was Mandy, he was what you all call now a career politician. When Prescott came into Politics the first time I saw him you would say yes working class down to earth socialist, but as time went on you said nope he is out for Prescott. Funny thing I do not remember Blair as being a Politician worth remembering but of course he was also a careerist with an aim. In my days going back Brown was another of the old guard you know would do well in labour but never in a million years would you say would lead the party.

    It’s surprising because except for Abbott the leadership contest is really about which type of New labour party we end up with, but both Milibands will bow down to Blair in the end.

    I suspect we will see both Milibands lead labour over the years, one may well take the party back into power with the Liberals tailing behind.

    But we will never again see the labour party that was once a power house for the working class it died in the 1950’s.

Comments are closed.