He’s had a whole bunch of nicknames. Back in the days of New Labour, he was known as the Prince of Darkness, owing to his shady machinations as Tony Blair's chief spin doctor. More recently, since his ennoblement, he has become the Dark Lord. To many of his detractors, he has always been known, with just a hint of homophobia, as Mandy.
For as long as most political pundits can remember, ‘Mandy’ has had the last laugh. He has survived political scandals with apparent ease, each time proving Nietzsche’s maxim in defiance of the obituarists: writing him off has only made him stronger.
Peter Mandelson’s first scandal involved a large sum of money borrowed from a fellow Labour MP, Geoffrey Robinson, and not declared. Mandelson complained that he was miserable in his flat in Clerkenwell. He needed somewhere he could relax and entertain his friends. As we shall see, the concept of relaxation amounts to Mandelson’s ruling passion. The loan was duly spent on a house in Notting Hill, without the knowledge of his building society or of parliament. Robinson wasn’t invited to the housewarming party. When the facts came to light, Mandelson resigned as Secretary of State for Trade and Industry.
His second spell in government lasted less than four months. In October 1999, he was made Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. By January 2000, he’d been forced to resign after attempting to fast-track a British passport for a wealthy Indian businessman. This did not prevent him being chosen two years later to be the UK’s European Commissioner. During his time in the job, there were a few minor scandals involving rich moguls and oligarchs in yachts, but nothing serious enough to get him sacked. He was able instead to return to England unscathed and received a peerage in October 2008.
More surprisingly, in the same month, he was given the role of Business Secretary by Gordon Brown. At the time, there was a great deal of speculation and talk of hugging one’s enemies close. It was no secret that Mandelson had favoured Blair over Brown, and no one was quite sure why the prime minister had decided to embrace his old enemy. Recent revelations from the Epstein files suggest that there are some enemies you just can’t hug into submission.
It’s fair to say there has always been a whiff of scandal about Mandelson. But scandals are part of the Westminster routine. They all seem hugely significant for a time, then the news cycle moves on. There are very few political scandals so huge that they resemble a natural disaster. In the aftermath of such scandals, nothing remains intact. This is the kind presently devastating Britain’s political landscape. It has been compared to the Profumo scandal of the early 60s, and there are some similarities, but the damage may yet be far more profound. As I write, Nigel Farage is calling it the worst political scandal for a century. Perhaps it would be better to admit that this one is unprecedented.
But the man at the epicentre of the present disaster has always cultivated a relaxed demeanour. He has, after all, had a lot of experience with this kind of thing. So, even as sheer havoc rages around him, we see the eternally relaxed Mandelson with every new piece of photographic evidence emerging from the Epstein files—from relaxing on a veranda in his bathrobe to lolling casually on a yacht or idling in a Parisian boudoir in his underpants.
Over the years, we have seen him compose numerous relaxed, mildly suggestive emails to his best chum, Jeffrey. He cadges a bit of money when he’s feeling hard up. His motto is “Relax, don’t do it!”
If any of this seems a little unfair on the man – he obviously never guessed these images would become public property one day – there is a kind of poetic justice to it. Back in 1996, Tony Blair had quipped, “My project will be complete when the Labour Party learns to love Peter Mandelson.” There was a deep suspicion of him on the back benches, especially among the Brown faction. I remember thinking at the time how out of place the MP for Hartlepool was in a traditionally progressive party. No Labour figure I knew had ever declared “we are intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich.” As an afterthought, he added “As long as they pay their taxes.”
What I didn’t know at the time was that he’d expressed this inauspicious sentiment while on a visit to Silicon Valley. These days, even fewer people are relaxed about them.
