The events of yesterday, with the arrest of Peter Mandelson, draws to an end a chequered career of a politician, who will no doubt go down in history as the icon of everything this is corrupt and sleazy about the Labour Party.
As Mandelson perp-walks to infamy, it’s worth reminding ourselves that his loathing for genuine socialism extended to the Socialist Labour Party, which came to a head when he debated the issue of Clause VI with our Comrade Arthur Scargill in Hartlepool in 1995, a debate organised by Tribune, and attended by current members of the Party
Arthur recalls that he won the debate hands down, and that, once he saw that he was losing the argument, Mandelson asked the chairperson to forego a vote on the outcome of the debate, playing his usual Machiavellian tricks.
Arthur insisted it went ahead and won the vote 10 to 1!!
Tribune later sent a photo to Arthur, with he and Mandelson debating, which read “-“Bobby” Looking to the heavens for deliverance”. It was obvious to Mandelson, that at that point, he had lost the debate.
Five years later, in 2001, Arthur Scargill described Labour’s policies and Mandelson:
“The government’s policies on the NHS, education and housing were “disastrous” and Mr Mandelson was an “unmitigated disaster”.
He added that job cuts at steel company Corus would help highlight his fight against the market forces Mr Mandelson and New Labour had embraced.
“The mass destruction of the British coal industry is testament to the fact that I got it right and they got it wrong,”
Given the current unpopularity of the Labour Government, and of Keir Starmer in particular, it seems that the prediction that Mandelson was an “unmitigated disaster” was prescient.
As the Gorton and Denton by-election, nears it is worth remembering that Peter Mandelson was one of the architects of New Labour, and has been instrumental in bringing the Labour Party to its current, parlous state; mistrusted, corrupt and wedded to Thatcherite ideology.