Labour leaders have repeatedly brought back Peter Mandelson despite his controversial reputation.

Mando & Rodney While not suggesting for one moment that Mandelson is as evil or criminal as Savile, I think it is the case that many of us thought he was a sleaze when he first appeared on the political scene—an opinion that has only been cemented by subsequent events. It’s the same way we were repelled by Savile and could not fathom why he kept getting work at the BBC etc. So what is it about obvious-sleaze Peter Mandelson that has made successive Labour leaders so keen to bring him back from the political dead? It’s hard to fathom. Mando is like Labour’s Portrait in the Attic, a slowly decaying, frightful entity that keeps getting another bite at the cherry, another slice of the pie, even while those of us on the sidelines recoil in horror and cry, ‘Why, can’t you see, he’s wearing no clothes!’ I think the answer seems to be that successive Labour leaders have believed that Mando – and only Mando – holds the secret to How To Get Elected, so in their desperation to win one for once, they welcome him back into the fold, and then feel obligated to offer him a reward. (Or maybe it’s that other thing. Where you are so repelled by a person that you will do anything to get them from your vicinity. Maybe Mando was so hated that they kept giving him jobs just so he’s stop calling them.) The New Labour secret to How To Get Elected, by the way, is be just as Tory as the Tories. What you want is a situation where all the little old ladies and gents on their way to the polls in key marginals (NB) mutter things like, ‘They’re all the same aren’t they? No difference that I can see. Might as well vote for the other lot this time.’ Although he was first discovered, under a presumed rock, by Neil Kinnock, it was Tony Blair who gave Mando his first government job: “Minister Without Portfolio”, which might otherwise be described as “Minister Who Will Stick His Nose Into Other Ministers’ Business”, or even more accurately as “Minister Without Beliefs”—because that’s the thing about people like him. He had no ideology, no political hinterland, no passion to help anybody other than himself. Not even a my father was a toolmaker story. And help himself he did. Remember, even as early as this, even before 1992, when he first entered Parliament, many of us saw him as a sleazeball. He was in government for little more than a year when the first sleazy scandal broke. He resigned in December of ’98 when it was revealed that he had borrowed £373,000, interest-free, so he could buy a house he couldn’t afford. It’s important to be very clear on this, and Angela Rayner take note. If you can’t afford the petrol, you can’t afford the car. And if you couldn’t borrow the money legit and pay it back with interest like the rest of us have to do, you can’t afford the house in Notting Hill. And you can’t afford the second home if you can’t afford the extra council tax. But, less than a year later, they brought him back from the dead. Zombie Mando was in government again as Northern Ireland Secretary, with the powerless screaming from the sidelines, “But can’t you see? He’s hideous!” True to form, and a little over a year later, he has to resign again over a dodgy citizenship application. But in 2004, he’s back again, fastest rat off the sinking ship, resigning as MP and taking up role of EU Trade Commissioner. Now, I know nothing, but I know that I’d probably enjoy such a role. Endless cocktail parties, little sausages, cheese and pineapple on sticks, good whisky, many opportunities to pad the old expenses account… And of course, access to lots and lots of useful market-sensitive information. In December 2024, possibly because they felt they owed him something after their landslide election win*, he’s given the US Ambassador role, and the rest is history. *They owed him nothing. It is abundantly clear that Labour won that election in spite of not having a plan for government, after having refused to commit themselves to anything other than more-of-the-same Tory policies, and without any enthusiasm from the British public. Low turnout, shrugged shoulders. Sure, we all loved seeing the end of the Tories, but nobody had high hopes. And Mendacious Mando had done absolutely nothing to engineer that win. But they think he has some secret sauce, don’t they? He’s so smarmy and oleaginous, they think he has some kind of magic touch. So they turned wheels, pulled levers, bent rules, ignored advice, looked the other way, stuck their fingers in their ears, sang LA LA LA at the top of their voices—all so they could’t hear the rest of us saying, HE’S A SLEAZE, A ZOMBIE SLEAZE, HE’S WEARING NO CLOTHES, HE RUBS SHOULDERS WITH THE WORST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD, AND ALL HE CARES ABOUT IS LINING HIS OWN POCKETS. I’ve been quiet on politics lately. But I’ve completed a number of YouGov polls over the past couple of years, and I’ve answered questions about how I rate Starmer, Badenoch et al on a scale of 1-10. Who do you think would make the best Prime Minister type of questions. And I’ve watched them squander their majority, watched them flapping in the wind of events, and failing to communicate the things they are doing to make life better for people. Because there has been some stuff. But there have also been banana skins and own goals and fuckups and unforced errors, and there has been bad luck and trouble. And the headlines have mainly been about the fuckups, the resignations, the failures, the self-defeating wrong policies, and so on. And over those months, and all those surveys, my opinion of Starmer has slipped from – at best – a lukewarm 5/10 to a cautious 2/10. At this stage he’s only getting 2 because he’s not Farage and he’s not Badenoch. I don’t want to go through another leadership contest; I don’t want yet another unelected (by us) Prime Minister. But he should probably leave. I keep thinking back to an overheard-in-Tesco moment, not long after he became Labour leader. Pandemic times. So it must have been some time in 2020, and I overheard a woman – almost certainly a Daily Mail reader – in Tesco telling someone how much she hated Keir Starmer. She actually said, “I think he’s evil, he’s horrible.” And I walked away thinking, that was a bit strong. At best, I thought he was bland and inoffensive. And we all wanted, when he was finally elected Prime Minister, we all wanted a lot less drama and a lot more competency. And it’s in that respect that he has badly let us down. He may have been boring: I forgave that. He may have been irrationally hated by Daily Mail readers: I thought that was silly, ignorant, and over the top. But he would at least be honest, and he would at least be competent: that was the great and only hope that saw this government into power. And I’ve been very very patient, waiting for the early teething problems to pass, the Bernie Ecclestone scandal equivalents. But so many people have already had to resign, so much experience has had to take an early pension/bath, so many sacrificial lambs have been sent to slaughter, and so much bad judgement has come to light. It is time for Starmer to resign. #keirStarmer #labourParty #Mandelson #news #politics #Starmer #UKPolitics

Mando & Rodney While not suggesting for one moment that Mandelson is as evil or criminal as Savile, I think it is the case that many of us thought he was a sleaze when he first appeared on the political scene—an opinion that has only been cemented by subsequent events. So what is it about obvious-sleaze Peter Mandelson that has made successive Labour leaders so keen to bring him back from the political dead? http://robmcminn.uk/2026/04/21/mando-rodney/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=jetpack_social