Less than three months after

This time, however, he has also announced his intention to publish his memoirs, which he says he hopes will be “readable” and not “tedious or self-serving”.  I have no doubt that, being the sort of chap he is, he will succeed on both counts.

Jack has also made clear his distaste for the recently-published memoirs of Lord Mandelson (which I am presently reading with great interest):

“I don’t approve of people breaking confidences. It may sound very old-fashioned, but I don’t approve, for example, of the way Peter Mandelson has behaved and neither do quite a number of my colleagues.”

No, I shouldn’t have thought you would approve, Jack.  Not your style at all.

The report contains specific allegations against three retiring Labour Members, Stephen Byers, Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt.  The charges against Byers, a former cabinet minister under Tony Blair, are the most serious and startling.

According to the Times, Byers, who said that he was “a bit like a sort of cab for hire”, made two specific claims. 

First, he said that, after he had intervened on behalf of Tesco, Peter Mandelson (whose friendship Byers considered to be a “trump card”) arranged for a burdensome proposed food labelling regulation to be changed.

Second, he claimed that he had acted on behalf of rail company, National Express, when it was trying to negotiate its way out of the loss-making East coast line franchise:

“So between you and I, I then spoke to Andrew Adonis, the transport secretary, and said, ‘Andrew, look, they’ve got a huge problem. Is there a way out of this?’ And then we, we sort of worked together — basically, the way he was comfortable doing it and you have to keep this very confidential yourself.

“He [Adonis] said we shouldn’t be involved in the detailed negotiation between his civil servants and National Express but we can give them a broad steer. So we basically got to a situation where we agreed with Andrew he would publicly be very critical of National Express and talk about, ‘I’m going to strip you of the franchise’ and be very gung-ho.

“And we said we will live with that and we won’t challenge you in the court, provided you then let us out by December, by the end of the year, and we can keep the other two franchises for a little longer. So, and that’s what we managed to do.”

Both these claims, if true, go to the very heart of the way this Government does business. 

They may, of course, be wholly untrue and a complete fantasy on the part of Stephen Byers.  However, there can be no doubt that both Lords Mandelson and Adonis should clarify their positions as a matter of absolute priority.

Techie Labour MP Derek Wyatt (the only Member with his own iPhone app) has

A few months ago, it was mooted that Lord Mandelson was to be appointed Minister for Information, in which guise he would deliver a weekly televised briefing from No 10.  To my great personal disappointment, nothing came of it.

Perhaps the way forward would be for the First Secretary and the Prime Minister to combine their undeniable communication talents and deliver a joint weekly televised homily over the World Wide Web, perhaps with the occasional guest and light musical interludes.  I have no doubt that it would be the most tremendous popular success.

Inflation has jumped from 1.9 per cent in November to 2.9 in December – the largest rise on record.  Mervyn King has warned that it may rise above 3 per cent, and that the patience of Britons will be “sorely tried”, with stagnant pay levels causing a real-terms decline in living standards.

Meanwhile, Fitch, the credit ratings agency, says that Government plans to halve the deficit in four years are too timid and that it is looking for more positive proposals to cut spending, failing which the UK’s triple-A credit rating will be threatened.

Peter Mandelson understands that there must be deep cuts in expenditure: he has warned that Britain and Europe face a period of “rapid relative economic decline” if governments fail to reduce spending.

Alistair Darling realises that, too: he is to propose spending reductions of around 17 per cent in areas outside health, policing and international aid.

And all the while, Downing Street is haunted by the poor, deluded ghost of a Prime Minister, still gibbering distractedly about “Labour investment” while the real world gets on with real life.

Alistair Darling has wasted no time in capitalising on Gordon Brown’s impotence in the wake of Wednesday’s attempted coup.

The Chancellor has briefed both the Times and the Guardian that Britain faces the “toughest spending cuts for 20 years” if Labour continues in office.

Darling – supported, no doubt, by Peter Mandelson – clearly recognises that the electorate won’t buy the Prime Minister’s line that “investment” can continue simultaneously with “halving the deficit”; indeed, the only individual who still appears to accept that fantasy is the PM himself. 

Such a very public disavowal by Darling of the Prime Minister’s stance would, as the Times observes, have been unthinkable a few weeks ago.  His new boldness simply serves to underscore the extent to which Brown is now, post-putsch, in thrall to the cabinet members who lent him their muted support earlier this week.

Labour’s big continuing problem, however, is the very fact that Brown is still there and it’s too late to get rid of him.  Expressions of new realism from Mandelson, Darling and others will be of no electoral advantage to a party whose leader – apparently now about to ask voters for a “full second term” – continues to inhabit a political la-la land. 

This morning’s Telegraph report that a rift has developed between the Prime Minister and Peter Mandelson comes as little surprise.  It has been very obvious for some weeks that Mandelson deeply disapproves of the strategy of entrenchment that the Prime Minister, together with the likes of Ed Balls, Alan Johnson and Peter Hain have decided to pursue, and is showing his displeasure through his absence.

Indeed, little has been seen of Mandelson – who was virtually omnipresent in the media in the first half of this year – since the Labour party conference in September.  It was then that he urged delegates that the only way for the party to stand a chance of winning the general election was by welcoming and embracing change:

This will be a “change” election.  Either we offer it, or the British public will turn to others who say that they do.

Of course, we must celebrate our record and be proud of defending it.  We did fix the roof while the sun was shining…

But let us remember that you win elections on the future, not the past.

No doubt to Mandelson’s dismay, however, Brown has apparently decided that the future is the past.  The PM and his allies have pursued an extraordinarily crude, class-based campaign that appears rooted in the mid-1970s.  Peter Hain’s speech to the Welsh Grand Committee last week was a prime example of this unsubtle approach, which must be utter anathema to the urbane, calculating Mandelson.

The Telegraph tells us that Mandelson is now rarely seen in the No. 10 war room, having seemingly become “disengaged”.

If that is indeed the case, it can only be to the Prime Minister’s detriment.  He should remember that it was Mandelson’s recall to the colours that saved his bacon after his dreadful summer of 2008, when it was only David Miliband’s cold feet that prevented his being ousted.

This close to a general election, Brown needs Mandelson badly.  He should make his peace with the First Secretary without delay.

That move is likely to be facilitated by yesterday’s announcement by Google, often criticised by Murdoch for its free “news aggregating” service, that it will allow online publishers to limit access to their content through a program called First Click Free, which will prompt users to register or subscribe to the news provider’s site after reading five articles in a day.

However, having apparently won the battle against Google, Murdoch now faces attack on another front, this time from Lord Mandelson, who, opening the debate yesterday on the second reading of the Digital Economy Bill, told the Lords:

There are some in the commercial sector who believe that the future of British media would be served by cutting back the role of the media regulator. They take this view because they want to commandeer more space and income for themselves and because they want to maintain their iron grip on pay-tv—a market in which many viewers feel they are paying more than they should for their movies and their sport. They also want to erode the commitment to impartiality—in other words, to fill British airwaves with more Fox-style news. They believe that profit alone should drive the gathering and circulation of news rather than allowing a role for what they call “state-sponsored journalism”.

The difficulty is that, without profit, many news providers – especially smaller ones – will die and, indeed, are already dying.  Only two months ago, the Neath Guardian, a Trinity Mirror title, closed after a disastrous collapse in circulation.  Across Britain, many other local newspapers are struggling.

Larger publishers are struggling, too.  Speaking this week at the World Newspaper Congress in Hyderabad, Chris Elliott, managing editor of the Guardian, announced plans to cut 70 to 100 journalist posts.  “We have to get on with doing the best we can with the resources we have,” he said.

The digital revolution has undoubtedly hit traditional newspapers hard, with readers increasingly accessing their content online free of charge.  In the long term, this must surely be unsustainable, a hard fact apparently recognised earlier this week by the Johnston Press when it announced that it would start charging for online access to six of its titles; the experiment will be watched with great  interest by the entire British newspaper industry.

Earlier this week, Rupert Murdoch told the Reuters Global Media Summit in Washington that:

“Good journalism is an expensive commodity. We need to do a better job of persuading consumers that high-quality news and information does not come free.”

Murdoch in this respect is quite right.  A diverse press, online or otherwise, is essential to a healthy democracy.  We may not like it, but if we want continued access to good journalism that is not provided by the BBC, we had better get used to paying for it.

Hard on the heels of Paul Waugh’s blogpost that the First Secretary is doing his best to return to Europe as high representative (the EU’s “foreign secretary”) comes an article in the Guardian claiming that Mandy is shortly to be appointed Minister for Information and to have a weekly televised slot beamed from Downing Street.

The excitement is becoming almost unbearable: is Mandy about to depart these shores and head for the fleshpots of glamorous, exotic Brussels or will he be presenting avuncular fireside chats to an eager audience straight from the nerve centre of British government?

Be sure to stay tuned for the next enthralling episode.

If this is indeed the case, it could hardly be worse news for Gordon Brown.  Not only is Mandelson effectively running the show at No 10, from whence his departure would leave the Government rudderless, but his return to Europe would send out a flashing neon signal that the First Secretary considers the PM a busted flush.

“If Tony and Gordon were stranded on a desert island surrounded by sharks, Tony would charm the sharks to carry him to safety.  Gordon would sit there raging: ‘Who sent the sharks?’”

Paranoia is generally understood to be a delusional condition in which the affected individual believes he is being persecuted.

If Lord Mandelson is indeed doing the rounds with such an unpleasant joke, it seems to me that any such belief on the Prime Minister’s part would not be delusional at all.

Damage reduction exercises by the Prime Minister, Lord Mandelson and Harriet Harman have only made matters worse.   The video of the final moments of Gordon Brown’s interview with Sky’s  Adam Boulton reveals the full extent of his anger; Mandelson was forced to deny using a particularly forceful  expletive in a telephone conversation with News International’s chief executive, Rebekah Brooks; and Harman used her speech on equality to point out that – wait for it –  the Sun features pictures of topless models on page 3.  Well, I never.

The PM’s discomfiture is unlikely to be eased by this morning’s edition of the Sun, which continues its less than flattering critique of the last 12 years of Labour government.  Worse still, however, it contains an “exclusive” report that Tony Blair is poised to become the “first President of Europe in weeks”.

The latter will surely cause particular displeasure to the beleaguered Brown.  Readers may like to be  reminded of William Hague’s vision of the scenario, delivered during the debate on the Lisbon treaty in January last year:

We can all picture the scene at a European Council sometime next year. Picture the face of our poor Prime Minister as the name “Blair” is nominated by one President and Prime Minister after another: the look of utter gloom on his face at the nauseating, glutinous praise oozing from every Head of Government, the rapid revelation of a majority view, agreed behind closed doors when he, as usual, was excluded.

Never would he more regret no longer being in possession of a veto: the famous dropped jaw almost hitting the table, as he realises there is no option but to join in.

And then the awful moment when the motorcade of the President of Europe sweeps into Downing Street. The gritted teeth and bitten nails: the Prime Minister emerges from his door with a smile of intolerable anguish; the choking sensation as the words “Mr President” are forced from his mouth.

And then, once in the Cabinet room, the melodrama of, “When will you hand over to me?” all over again.

Benedict Brogan says that Brighton was particularly quiet last night.

In his Today interview with Jim Naughtie on his damage-limitation tour of the broadcasters this morning (a lot of damage, little of it limited), the Prime Minister used the line:

“I accept that we are the insurgents, not the incumbents.”

As I have remarked previously, this turn of phrase sounds bad enough when coming from Mandelson; from the Prime Minister’s lips, it is positively repellent.  It is also palpably untrue; Labour manifestly are the incumbents and we are not, thank God, living through an insurgency.  Our troops in Afghanistan are doing that.

It’s a silly, Mandelsonian line; Mr Brown should drop it.

This will be a “change” election.  Either we offer it, or the British public will turn to others who say that they do.

Of course, we must celebrate our record and be proud of defending it.  We did fix the roof while the sun was shining…

But let us remember that you win elections on the future, not the past.

Do not make the mistake of sitting back and expecting people to be grateful.

Mandelson’s speech was well received by the conference delegates, probably because of its bravura delivery, which was in marked contrast to the downbeat mood that has otherwise, by all accounts, pervaded the party’s last pre-election assembly.

Gordon Brown will make his keynote speech to the conference today.   In it, he is expected to make his pitch for the continued support of middle Britain, which counter-intuitively lent Blair-led Labour its support in three elections, but which is now manifestly deserting it under Blair’s successor.

Brown knows that he must regain the support of middle Britain if he is to have any chance on 6 May, which is now the anticipated polling day; so his speech is expected to press the buttons that Blair pressed so successfully.  Thus, in a well-trailed passage, he will say:

“The decent, hard-working majority are getting ever more angry – rightly so – with the minority who will talk about their rights, but never about the responsibilities.”

He will talk of the need to curb binge drinking, to get parents to take responsibility for the actions of feral children, to reform Parliament, and more. The sort of things that middle Britain is concerned about.

But it’s too late. 

Voters do want change; Mandelson is right.  And when people want change, they start by changing the government.  I know, because I’ve been there before.

In 1997, when I was fighting the Conwy seat, I knocked on the door of a man in Penrhynside who told me that he was a self-employed builder.  He had, he said, voted Conservative all his life, but he was voting Labour now, because it was time for a change.  He said it with regret, not anger.

“But have you considered,” I asked him, “that it might be a change for the worse?”

“Yes, it might be,” he conceded, “but we won’t know until they’ve been in for a bit.”

It was pointless arguing with him, and I would not have tried to do so; he had made up his mind and that was that.

So Peter Mandelson is right to identify change as the theme of the next general election.  And he is to be congratulated on injecting, however briefly, a modicum of fighting spirit into what appears to be a terminally pessimistic conference.

But, as the consummate political operator, he will know that Labour’s biggest problem is that what most people really want to change is the man who will take to the stage in Brighton later today.

However, out of respect to the Royal Welsh and the rest of our troops engaged in Afghanistan, perhaps he might, on reflection, decide that that it is not the happiest choice of words and stop using it.

Peter Hain, however, says that he would never do so.

It’s hard to know what to be more grateful for.