In blaming journalists for the confusion over the Government’s spending plans, Peter Mandelson also magnanimously absolved the Conservative party from any responsibility:
“I don’t blame the Conservatives. They are just propagandists.”
There will be a lot of happy faces in CCHQ this morning. To be recognised as a propagandist by Peter Mandelson is probably the highest professional compliment that a spin doctor can be paid.
Peter Mandelson has given an interview to the Economist in which he asserts that what was thought to be a U-turn by Gordon Brown over spending is, in fact, nothing of the sort; it is simply a change of “optics”.
The interview is a development of the theme launched by Mandelson in his Progress speech last week, in which he sought to present Labour as a party of “wise spenders, not big spenders”, who did not believe that you could solve problems “simply by throwing money at them”.
It had never been Labour’s plan, you see, to maintain spending at its former stratospheric levels; it was always intended that it would be reduced. And that is what is happening now.
But what about Gordon’s stance of “Tory cuts versus Labour investment”? Hasn’t he abandoned that?
Good heavens, no. Allow Lord Mandelson to explain:
“[It is the Prime Minister’s] firm belief that we need to maintain investment and spending rather than adopt the cuts the Conservatives are advocating.
“But he is equally making clear – and did so before, during and since the budget – that we need to bring down the deficit.”
You may think that, actually, it’s not all that clear. You may even think that those two statements look like mutually-contradictory hogwash. But that is where the “optics” come in.
Because Mandelson is referring not, as you may think, to devices for dispensing the copious slugs of the hard stuff that you will need before you can be persuaded to believe such monumental baloney, but rather to political prisms to enable you properly to perceive the elegance of Labour’s carefully crafted and wholly consistent economic masterplan.
Yes, concedes Mandelson, there has indeed been some confusion over Labour’s spending proposals. But that is not the fault of Gordon Brown, but that of journalists, who are “not making the truthful distinction between what the Prime Minister is saying is necessary now and what he believes we should do over the medium term.”
So I hope that’s all absolutely clear to you now.
But if it’s not, and you’re still confused, perhaps you should try polishing your optics.
Speaking of the Guardian poll, there is little that emerges from it to cheer the Liberal Democrats as their Bournemouth conference draws to a close.
Run the poll’s findings through Electoral Calculus and you will find that it predicts a net loss of 26 seats for the Lib Dems, including two in Wales.
Lib Dem election planners may consequently decide that it would be better for them to seek to benefit from the collapse in support for Labour, rather than try to shore up seats under attack from the Tories.
If they do, Mr Clegg will have to adopt a change in rhetoric; calling David Cameron a conman won’t help in vulnerable Labour seats such as Liverpool Wavertree, where, on BBC Breakfast this morning, one lady who was shown a picture of the Lib Dem leader thought he was Peter Mandelson.
Posted in general election, Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, Peter Mandelson
Tagged Politics
Gordon Brown will today use the c-word for the first time in public.
Speaking to the TUC in Liverpool, the Prime Minister will admit that Labour’s aim of reducing the budgetary deficit within four years cannot be achieved solely through efficiency savings and asset sales. There will also have to be cuts.
Labour strategists recognise that the Prime Minister’s hitherto stubborn refusal to speak of reductions in public spending is causing further damage to the party’s credibility; voters have accepted for some time that spending cuts are not only inevitable but desirable, and a poll in today’s Times suggests that they trust the Conservatives more than Labour to deliver those cuts in such a way as not to damage public services.
Labour therefore urgently need to play catch-up and Brown’s acknowledgment, in the particularly hostile arena of the TUC, that cuts are necessary will amount to a deck-clearing exercise, allowing the argument to move on to priorities and away from dogma. The speech will be so symbolically important that its precise wording was still being worked on last night.
Peter Mandelson, in the meantime, was yesterday preparing the way for Brown’s epiphany in a speech of his own at the LSE. Addressing the Progress campaign group, Mandelson sought to reposition Labour as a party of “insurgents, not incumbents”, committed to the reform of public services through carefully targeted spending:
Our 1997 manifesto described the New Labour approach as being “wise spenders, not big spenders”. This is and remains a core New Labour principle. We do not believe that we should try to solve problems simply by throwing money at them. We need to be: “effective state” social democrats, not “big state” social democrats.
Mandelson’s difficulty, however, is that such an assertion is wholly belied by the experience of twelve years of Labour in power, which have seen state spending mushroom to fifty per cent of GDP. Labour’s approach to problems and non-problems alike has indeed been to throw money at them; voters simply won’t believe Mandelson when he declares that the party that fed and nurtured the bloated state for over a decade is now austerely wedded to the principle of delivering the most bang for the buck.
It’s far too late for such a conversion, as Gordon Brown, too, will discover once he has finally brought himself to utter the c-word in Liverpool later today.
The internet is a wonderful thing; it enables me to discover that in my absence in foreign parts, Nick Robinson skewered Lord Mandelson on this morning’s Today programme.
Apparently Mandelson – who is busy masterminding Labour’s “efficiency savings” – denied that Gordon Brown had ever used the words “Tory cuts versus Labour investment”. Robinson had the Hansard record and quoted it to Mandelson. I would love to have heard Mandelson’s reaction; I must try to find it on iPlayer later on.
I am astonished, however, that Mandelson tried to make the denial at all. It has become such a well-worn theme of Gordon’s – I have myself been banging on about it for weeks – that it’s pretty insulting to the competence of the BBC’s highly competent political editor to deny that the words were ever spoken.
The Guardian Politics Blog has bad news for Peter Mandelson today.
Mandelson’s supporters, it will be recalled, were enthused by a provision in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill that permits peers to resign from the House of Lords. This would, it was thought, enable Mandelson to resign before the next general election and return to the Commons as “keeper of the Blairite flame”.
However, the Lord Chancellor, Jack Straw, today visited the Guardian’s offices and confided that the Bill, due to have its second reading in October, will be amended to provide for a five-year “quarantine” period before retiring peers can seek election to the Commons.
Straw is well known to be no fan of Mandelson. He will undoubtedly derive huge satisfaction from knowing that his amendment will ensure that the political caravan will have moved on to the extent of putting the Labour leadership well beyond the First Secretary’s reach by the time he is eligible to stand for the lower House again.
The al-Megrahi affair continues to dominate the headlines, as it surely will for some considerable time yet.
It has now emerged, however, that there was a conversation about the case between Gordon Brown and Col Gaddafi on the periphery of the G8 meeting in early July, when they discussed the possibility of al-Megrahi’s release and Brown urged Gaddafi to ensure that the terrorist’s homecoming, if it happened, was a “purely private, family occasion” – a stricture conspicuously ignored by Gaddafi.
Gaddafi’s son, Saif, also says that he discussed the case with Peter Mandelson, with whom he met on at least two occasions earlier this year, most recently on Corfu, a matter of days before al-Megrahi’s release was announced.
Saif Gaddafi, indeed, has gone further and claimed on Libyan TV that there were extensive negotiations between Libya and Britain over the al-Megrahi case:
“It is to be said for the first time, you were present on the table in all commercial, oil and gas agreements that we supervised in that period,” he told Megrahi, as the pair sat together in the private jet’s luxury lounge. “You were on the table in all British interests when it came to Libya, and I personally supervised this matter.”
The potentially incendiary danger to the Government of Saif’s claim needs hardly to be pointed out. Mandelson, however, firmly denies the allegation; he calls the suggestion of any deals between Libya and Britain “offensive” and repeats the Government’s mantra that the issue of al-Megrahi’s release was “entirely a matter for the Scottish justice minister”.
Acknowledging the meeting with Saif Gaddafi, however, he says:
“They had the same response from me as they’ve had from any other member of the government.”
As statements go, that must be considered one of the most quintessential Mandelsonian purity. Given that we have not been told what response, if any, “they” have had from any other member of the government, all of whom are still seemingly observing a rigid vow of silence, it really doesn’t take us any further at all. It may be true, it may not; but there’s really no way of telling.
Sometimes you really do have to take your hat off to him.
Wall-to-wall bad news on the economic front today.
The latest labour market figures show an increase in unemployment of 220,000 over the three months to the end of June, or 750,000 over a year. Almost eight million people are now economically inactive.
Prospects for young people are particularly worrying; almost one million individuals under 24 are now without work.
At the same time, the Bank of England’s Mervyn King has reported that the downturn is likely to be deep and long-lasting, although there has been some slightly recovery of confidence since the depth of last autumn’s economic collapse:
“The recession appears to be deeper than the MPC thought likely at the time of the May report …nominal indicators remain weak and the adjustment of balance sheets has a long way to run.”
A report by the Audit Commission, also published today, warns that the downturn will put increasingly heavy strains on local government; demand for benefits, welfare and help with debt are growing, and social problems such as domestic violence and mental ill-health are expected to follow as the recession deepens.
Everyone I speak to is deeply concerned, and with good reason. At such a worrying time, the least that politicians of all parties can and should do is to level with the electorate and treat them as adults.
One of the few positive messages that emerged from Peter Mandelson’s bad-tempered interview with Evan Davis this morning is that he, at least, accepts the full, enormous scale of the economic difficulties this country faces; unfortunately, I am far from certain that this is yet acknowledged by the Prime Minister, who still has very much the appearance of a man in denial.
Evan Davis acquitted himself with distinction in his interview with Peter Mandelson on this morning’s Today programme.
Mandelson obviously thought he had a bit of a patsy in Davis and tried to get away with attacking the Tories, rather than answering Davis’s very incisive questions about Labour tax and spending plans post the general election. Davis stood his ground and told Mandelson flatly that he was there to answer questions about the government and not the opposition. This clearly upset Mandelson, who became increasingly bad-tempered as a consequence.
Notwithstanding his protestations that he is not running the country in Gordon Brown’s absence, Mandelson has done his level best to try to dominate the both the printed and broadcast media since his return from Corfu – he has an article in today’s Guardian, to follow the lengthy G2 interview on Monday.
After thia morning’s Today appearance, however, he may wish that he had stayed at home with his croissants and muesli.
The BBC Wales website reports that Rhodri Morgan has decided not to delegate the oversight of the Welsh Assembly Government during his caravan holiday in West Wales.
An uncharacteristic missed trick on the part of Peter Mandelson.
I’m a big fan of the PoliticsHome website, which has become, for me, the definitive source of up-to-the–minute political news. I particularly like its live feed of the top 100 blogs, so much so that I tweeted in despair when it was down for several hours on Sunday. Extraordinarily enough, less than twenty minutes later it was back online. I claim no credit.
Blogs are now of such political significance that it is essential to keep up with what they’re saying. Sometimes – mostly, perhaps – they are no more than speculative ephemera, unfounded rumour that disappears into the electronic ether almost as soon as the “publish” button has been pressed. Sometimes, however, they are devastatingly important, the most obvious recent example being Guido’s assassination of Damian McBride.
You never know when something equally important may pop up again. Consequently, I tend most evenings to trawl backwards through the PoliticsHome blog feed to catch up with any news I may have missed during the day.
Yesterday evening, the feed alerted me to a post on the Spectator Coffee House blog entitled “Is Brown starting to accept defeat?”, which, in turn, referred to a Financial Times article about the difficulties ministers are experiencing in recruiting parliamentary private secretaries.
The role of PPS, though lowly, is traditionally seen as the first step on the ministerial ladder. It is, as a consequence, usually accepted with some eagerness. The FT, however, quotes one recently-departed minister, observing the gaps in the PPS ranks, as remarking:
“Why would you bother if you know that there is no chance of becoming a minister in the next government?”
This, the FT reckons, is a symptom of “weakened morale within the parliamentary Labour party and growing expectations of defeat at the next general election”. Whether or not this is the case, I cannot say, but I must concede that I have indeed noticed some extraordinarily unlikely PPSs sitting behind ministers in the chamber of late.
The FT article goes on, more interestingly, to discuss general morale within No 10, quoting one “Downing Street insider” as saying that the Prime Minister had become more relaxed “because he now realised that he was certain to lose the next election and was powerless to defy political gravity”.
Another “close ally”, however, says that the PM “thinks he can win-no doubt about it”, while a third praises the impact Peter Mandelson has made on the war-room: “Peter is professional, committed and very funny”. Mandelson’s assertion that Labour are now “the underdogs” is said to “encapsulate a new fighting spirit”.
The FT article is, at first glance, a curious piece. It says, on the face of it, little of substance. But, take the piece as a whole, and the following messages emerge:
Of course, the FT piece may in truth be nothing more than filler copy in what everyone acknowledges is a particularly lean time for political news.
On the other hand, its publication coincides with Mandelson’s return to the country and his big interview in the Guardian. It presses many of the same buttons. It is highly complimentary of Mandelson. It even mentions, for heaven’s sake, how terrifically funny he is.
And we are, after all, talking Peter Mandelson here.
Today’s Guardian carries a lengthy G2 interview by Decca Aitkenhead with Peter Mandelson, who has today Easyjetted back to Britain to assume the reins of power minus the intervention of his BlackBerry.
The article is an account of a day Aitkenhead spent shadowing Mandelson, who appears to be determinedly attempting to erase his former Prince of Darkness persona and replace it with something altogether cuddlier.
This is, in fact, a process that has been continuing for some time. Last June, Mandelson told the Telegraph that Gordon Brown should lighten up and “introduce a bit of humour and jollity” to his work. Now, the First Secretary of State confides that he doesn’t see himself as a “big beast”, but rather as a “kindly pussycat”, keen to inject an element of avuncular “fun” into the workings of government:
I take huge pride in the younger members of cabinet, who knew me in the 90s and associated me with winning. They’ve benefited from my support and advice, and they don’t feel the suspicion towards me. They’ve wanted to work with me. Appreciated my age and experience. And my – my sense of fun.”
Was fun missing from cabinet before his return?
“Well, I think it was missing from when I was in government before.”
And, it would appear, those callow cabinet colleagues are responding warmly to that Mandelsonian approachability:
In part, his power derives from a ministerial brief straddling almost every policy area of government, and in part from colleagues’ eagerness to consult his advice; Ed Miliband recently described him as a “benign uncle”…
All this looks suspiciously like reinvention; reinvention with a purpose.
Mandelson acknowledges that Labour’s chances at the next general election are “no better than evens”, but says that afterwards, win or lose, he will want to “remain somewhere in the world”.
When it is put to him that Jack Straw’s Constitutional Renewal Bill may give him a route back to the Commons and a tilt at the leadership, he says no more than that he is “not anticipating any change for himself”.
Such an extensive article, timed to coincide with Mandelson’s stint as Gordon’s locum, is of considerable significance. If not precisely a panegyric, it is nonetheless highly flattering. Furthermore, it has been picked up by the BBC, Telegraph and Times, all of which repeat with some relish the “pussycat” line.
Mandelson does nothing for nothing. If he hasn’t yet decided to run for the leadership (that decision would probably depend on the scale of a Labour defeat), he clearly hasn’t ruled it out.
Right now, he’s happy just to position himself and bide his time.
And his reinvention of himself as “Pussycat Peter” is part of that process.
The Mandelson for leader story has clearly been heavily briefed out to the press (I wonder by whom?), appearing in several Sundays, including the Independent.
This quotes Peter Slowe, the chairman of the Labour Finance and Industry Group, who last week called for Gordon Brown to stand down, as saying:
“Mandelson is the only one with clout, intellect and charisma in the Labour ranks who could realistically take on the Tories and win at a general election.”
Which says nothing whatever for the talents of Johnson, Harman and Milibands major and minor. Jack Straw had better get his Constitutional Reform Bill onto the statute book PDQ.
The Indy also quotes the major Labour donor, Peter Carpenter, as calling for Gordon Brown to step down, to facilitate an “orderly transition” of leadership:
“Talking to people, I am not alone in holding the view that it would be better for Gordon if he came to the conclusion that he is part of the problem rather than part of the solution.”
Echoing the phrase that Mr Brown used to press Tony Blair to hand over power, he added: “We should have an orderly transition that could be done reasonably rapidly within the party rules. I just think that it’s a credibility issue as far as Brown is concerned.”
In a veiled reference to Lord Mandelson’s favourite choice of jumper, Mr Carpenter went on: “I am sure that the men in suits, or as I say in the Labour Party the men in red pullovers, will be whispering in Mr Brown’s ear.”
Mr Carpenter also refers, in rather blunt terms, to the Prime Minister’s notorious unluckiness:
“He does have a communication problem. He cannot do non-financial policy. He seems to slip on every banana skin that’s about.”
Mr Brown’s accident proneness has, of course, been frequently commented on, most regularly and caustically by Guido.
However, the best encapsulation of the PM’s problems with Dame Fortune that I have heard was shared with me by a former Labour MP, now an occasional journalist.
“Gordon Brown,” he told me, “is the sort of man for whom, when one door shuts, another one closes.”
Today’s Telegraph runs a story that a group of Blairite Labour MPs is urging Lord Mandelson to take advantage of provisions in a Bill currently before Parliament and resign from the Lords, with a view to replacing Gordon Brown as leader of the Labour party after the next general election. According to the Telegraph:
supporters of David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, could change their allegiance to Lord Mandelson as the most credible “keeper of the Blairite flame”.
Lord Mandelson, for his own part, is said to be “intrigued” by the idea.
The story has, in fact, been doing the rounds for a while now, and the extent to which it is founded on fact or is merely summer speculation must be a matter of debate. The Telegraph reports the details of the proposal as follows:
The plan depends on a change in the law to allow peers to resign from the House of Lords, which has already been announced by Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, to be speeded up.
Lord Mandelson would then become Mr Mandelson once again – and declare himself available to stand as a Labour candidate in the general election, which must be held by next June.
His supporters hope Hilary Armstrong, the 63-year-old former chief whip, could be persuaded to back Lord Mandelson, her friend and political ally, as her successor in North West Durham, which has a Labour majority of 13,443.
The change in the law referred to is clause 9 of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill, whose first reading took place shortly before the summer recess. This provides that “any person who is an excepted hereditary peer or a life peer may at any time resign from the House of Lords”.
Resignation from the House of Lords, however, would not appear to amount to the disclaimer of the peerage itself – unlike the position under the Peerage Act 1963, where the peerage is disclaimed for life.
The consequence would therefore seem to be that, if the proposal went exactly according to plan, there would be no need for Lord Mandelson to “become Mr Mandelson once again”.
The House of Lords Act 1999 removed the disqualification of peers from membership of the House of Commons. At present, there are three hereditaries sitting in the Commons: Viscount Thurso, who was, in 2001, the first hereditary peer to elected be elected to Parliament after the Act, and who sits as John Thurso; Douglas Hogg, who became the third Viscount Hailsham on the death of his father in 2004; and Michael Ancram, who became the thirteenth Marquess of Lothian, also in 2004.
Post 1999, there appears to be no reason, other than convention, why an hereditary peer elected to the Commons should not continue to use his title. There would appear to be even less reason for a life peer who resigned his membership of the Lords under the new provisions to cease to do so.
Therefore, after the next general election, if the Blairites’ scheme goes exactly according to plan, the electors of Durham North West could find themselves represented in Parliament by the Rt Hon Baron Mandelson, of Foy in the County of Herefordshire and of Hartlepool in (appropriately enough) the County of Durham.
In every sense, the First Secretary of State and Lord President of the Council would become simply the First Lord.
Having decided, despite previous misgivings, to give Twitter a go, I must say that I really am finding it a tremendously useful tool for political communication.
I’m not the only one to do so, either. HM Government has, it appears, now embraced Twitter in a big way, so much so that the Cabinet Office has just issued a “Template Twitter strategy for Government Departments”.
The strategy is a full 20 pages long and includes among its principles:
Timely: in keeping with the ‘zeitgeist’ feel of Twitter, our tweets will be about issues of relevance today or events/opportunities coming soon. For example it will not be appropriate to cycle campaign messages without a current ‘hook’.
That admonition would seem to have been infringed by a tweet I received only yesterday from DowningStreet (which I have decided to follow, on the “know your enemy” principle) which referred me to a letter to the public from the Prime Minister on the Number 10 website.
This turned out to be a pure propaganda piece entitled I’m fighting hard for you – PM, the only apparent “hook” being that it was written by Gordon “before taking his summer break”. Presumably, he will write a similar one when he gets back at the weekend, exhausted after all that enforced relaxation.
The strategy has been published by one Neil Williams, head of corporate digital channels at (surprise, surprise) Peter Mandelson’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Mr Williams introduces the document in a post on the Cabinet Office blog, in which he concedes that:
You might think a 20-page strategy a bit over the top for a tool like Twitter.
Well, yes, now you mention it, I think I do, actually.
But Mr Williams is clearly an enthusiast. If one is to tweet, one must tweet properly:
Having held back my JFDI inclinations long enough to sit down and write a proper plan for BIS’s corporate Twitter account, I was surprised by just how much there is to say – and quite how worth saying it is, especially now the platform is more mature and less forgiving of mistakes.
JFDI? Yes, I was stumped by that one, too. So I Googled it and was told by the Urban Dictionary that it stands for: “Just F***ing Do It!”
I confess I was a bit surprised, not to say shocked, to learn that that is the way they communicate these days in the upper-middle ranks of the civil service; they’ve clearly moved on a bit since the age of Sir Humphrey.
Mr Williams, in his spare time, also authors a blog called Mission Creep. A brief visit to it confirmed the demise of the era of “your obedient servant”. The blog’s most recent post, for example, is entitled: Seriously dude, WTF is social media? The NSFW presentation one year on.
I suggest you visit the Urban Dictionary to learn what WTF stands for, although the worldly-wise among you may know, or have guessed, already. I blush to admit that I did.
But NSFW? After much fevered speculation, I was relieved to discover that it stands for Not Safe for Work.
It could have been a lot worse.
