“Mad, bad, dangerous and beyond redemption”
That is what Tony Blair thought of Gordon Brown according to Peter Mandelson's memoirs serialised in yesterday's Times.
I did not think anything cold possibly make my opinion of the last government even lower, but Mandelson's memoirs have done it, both in terms of my view about them as a government and of Blair, Brown and Mandelson as human beings.
The person who has taken the biggest hit in terms of losing what remaining shreds of respect I had for him is of course Mandelson himself.
Either he believes what he has been writing, or he doesn't. If he is not sincere, what can we make of a person who will publish this sort of comment about his former close friends and colleagues for money?
But what Mandy has written about Blair and particularly Brown reflects his true views: let's remember that he came back from Brussels to try to shore up the last government, and supported Brown remaining Labour leader after James Purnell resigned, when Mandelson's continued support was critical to keeping Brown in number ten.
I do not see how anyone who believes the contents of Mandelson's memoirs can possibly also believe that his actions in propping up Brown as Prime Minister were in the national interests of Britain.
I did not think anything cold possibly make my opinion of the last government even lower, but Mandelson's memoirs have done it, both in terms of my view about them as a government and of Blair, Brown and Mandelson as human beings.
The person who has taken the biggest hit in terms of losing what remaining shreds of respect I had for him is of course Mandelson himself.
Either he believes what he has been writing, or he doesn't. If he is not sincere, what can we make of a person who will publish this sort of comment about his former close friends and colleagues for money?
But what Mandy has written about Blair and particularly Brown reflects his true views: let's remember that he came back from Brussels to try to shore up the last government, and supported Brown remaining Labour leader after James Purnell resigned, when Mandelson's continued support was critical to keeping Brown in number ten.
I do not see how anyone who believes the contents of Mandelson's memoirs can possibly also believe that his actions in propping up Brown as Prime Minister were in the national interests of Britain.
Comments
That's all I have to say about the last government in general really!
Still lets not argue about who killed who, and instead try to continue getting our country back on track!
I thought Leo McKinstry’s comment on Peter Mandelson in the Daily Express was particularly apt. “… part pantomime villain, part Machiavellian operator, part visionary … who has spent a lifetime practising the arts of guile and duplicity.”
He has received the pillorying in the press that he deserves. Is he a friend or foe of Labour? Peter Osborne in the Daily Mail scorned Mandelson as “greedy and treacherous” in his decision to publish at the worst possible time for the party he purports to love.
Brown was clearly an incompetent PM and Mandelson’s account contains a mixture of truth and fallacy. Whether he has told outright lies in that he knowingly told untruths will be impossible to measure. I am convinced by now he believes his own propaganda.
What I am certain about is that he is thoroughly narcissistic. His shameless egotism enabled him to muscle between Blair and Brown in order to claim the glory of new Labour’s success. Now at least he can share in the failure and tarnish the silver for the new leader who will have graduated from his class of 97.
Whatever history will later record about the Labour Government there is no doubt now that Peter Mandelson acted like a Tudor courtier. He enjoyed the lavish gifts and titles bestowed upon him, sycophantically flattering the people whom he later stabbed in the back. Like Thomas Cromwell another master of ruthless duplicity his book and his political career deserves a likewise sticky end, metaphorically speaking.