Remember John Kennedy FDR? Well we Tories should do well to remind ourselves of the old adage; “we have nothing to fear but fear of Peter Mandelson”. The way the media and other cognoscenti have been talking in recent days (witness Question Time last Thursday evening), you would think that Baron Mandelson was responsible for every plague, fire and pestilence that ever stalked the land. Just because J K Rowling funds the Labour Party, it does not mean that Lord Voldemort now runs riot (except perhaps on Radio 4 Today programme).
Yes Lord Mandelson is well versed in the arts of spin and was a formidable architect of New Labour. But if he was so deadly, he wouldn’t have got into a position in which he had to resign from the Cabinet twice, be mired in yet another controversy and be loathed by so many of his colleagues on his own side. All right thinking people should seek to change the narrative – and present Baron Mandelson for what he is – a lightening conductor for Gordon Brown and a shield against a leadership challenge.
If Peter Mandelson is Lord Voldemort, I am Harry Potter.
