The Count is Dead; Pass the Wooden Stake

It is gratifying to know that the time-honoured values of modern politics will not be laid to rest on the back of the early demise of David Laws. For whilst this virginal coalition fumbles its way through the minefield of modern political morality and the rituals of spin in its attempt to present the acceptable face of government (if that’s not an oxymoron) ‘Count Mandelson’ will be reworking his version of Machiavellianism in the first volume of his memoirs.


How wonderfully ironic that he has titled this tome ‘The Third Man’ . For just as Grahame Green told of of a social, economic, and morally corrupt post war Viennese society Mandelson’s Third Man offers an insight into a similar ruined, vacuous regime of intrigue and deceit. The difference, however, is that Greene looks back on a sequence of events which inform the reader early on that the story is not a pretty one.

‘Count Mandelson', on the other hand, gave us an insight in last Thursday’s Times that his version of ‘The Third Man’ will be one of...”a mixture of history, autobiography and emotion” and that hope springs eternal through the timeless values of the Labour Party as encapsulated in a party of “conscience and reform” aka New Labour.

If this vignette was meant to whet our appetites for the full revelations of what went on behind the scenes during New Labour’s gestation period, through infancy into maturity and decay it failed to do so. Given that much, if not all, of the machinations of New Labour’s power struggles have been well revealed over the years through a variety of leaks, articles and memoirs it is unlikely that the reader will be offered anything new to get excited about.

Mandelson’s taster gives the distinct impression that volume 1 (if not volumes 2,3 etc) centre’s mainly around his favourite subjects; himself, and the political equivalent of Colemanballs. So, if you are desperate to find out who he did or did not support in the 1994 Labour leadership campaign read on. For, as he puts it, this is still the subject of some debate, although by whom we are not advised. It is also gratifying to know that he has now realised that electing a leader of a political party is much better than simply appointing someone and that difficult choices cannot be ducked. Who would have thought it?

Above all what this article does tell us is that the book will be nothing more than the sum of New Labour’s empty rhetoric over the past 18 years. So, if you are desperate to know that New Labour became more than just... “a party of class or sectional interest to being a broad-based party of conscience and reform,” or that it has...”an outlook that remains in tune with the priorities and ambitions of families across the country,” I urge you to buy the book. However, if you want to know what this verbal garbage actually means take a course in Postmodernism.

The Count is dead, pass the wooden stake..

The Third Man: Life at the Heart of New Labour, by Peter Mandelson is to be published by Harper Press Summer 2010