MEDIA STUDIES
The Prince of Darkness no longer strikes terror in the press
STEPHEN GLOVER
My eyes nearly popped out of my head on Monday when I read a column by A.N. Wilson, the distinguished novelist and writer, in the London- Evening Standard. Having read the excerpts from Geoffrey Robinson's book in the Daily Mail, Mr Wil- son wanted to get his claws into Peter Man- delson. He made some suggestions which others may have entertained but have not dared express. There is 'a scarcely definable sexual chemistry between Mr Mandelson and Tony Blair', Mr Wilson wrote. 'I'm not saying the PM is gay,' he hastened to assure us. 'Something, however, lingers from Mr Blair's experience of an all-boy public school. He is bewitched by Mandy.' Mr Wilson finished off by describing Mr Man- delson as a 'silly queen'.
I am searching for an historical analogy to convey the sensational nature of this attack. To mix one's Victorian novels, it is as though Tom Towers had taken on the Marquess of Steyne. Six months ago, even so brave a columnist as Mr Wilson would not have written this. Or, if he had, his edi- tor would not have printed it. The editor of the Evening Standard is, of course, dear old Max Hastings, at whose parties Mr Mandel- son has been a welcome guest. I do not know where Mr Hastings was on Monday morning, and it is possible that he was absent and that some underling felt unable to censor Mr Wilson's words. But I like to think that Mr Hastings takes a keen inter- est in what goes into his paper, and that he judged Mr Wilson's observations to be acceptable. What a transformation there has been.
Few politicians have exerted such a hold on the press as Mr Mandelson. Several other ministers cultivate sympathetic columnists and reporters. Mr Mandelson's brilliance has been to do all that, but to extend his grip to editors and proprietors. In normal circumstances, proprietors can't be bothered with ordinary ministers and prefer to be courted by prime ministers. Life is too short. But Mr Mandelson was special. Most particularly, he made his number with Rupert Murdoch, and his daughter Elisabeth. (According to the Andrew Rawnsley book, Murdoch once remarked that Mandelson was 'easy' because he was 'a star-fucker'.) In the sum- mer of 1998, Murdoch's Sun ran a cam- paign, possibly orchestrated by Elisabeth Murdoch and her partner Matthew Freud,
to get Mr Mandelson into the Cabinet. `One man must do well in next week's Cabi- net reshuffle,' the paper declared on 24 July 1998. `Mandelson may not be liked by his party. They think he's too full of him- self. That's nonsense. He has every right to be proud of his major role in creating New Labour.'
Mr Mandelson's first setback with the Sun and other sympathetic titles came in December 1998 when he was forced to resign after it was revealed that he had bor- rowed £373,000 from his colleague Geof- frey Robinson. But most newspapers were glad to see him back in the Cabinet as Northern Ireland Secretary ten months later. As Peter Oborne pointed out in these pages at the time, much of the press was quite uninterested in the extremely critical remarks about his conduct over the loan that were made by Elizabeth Filkin, the parliamentary commissioner. Mr Mandel- son was largely rehabilitated, though the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail were not wholly at ease, and have crossed swords with him increasingly over Ulster.
What has changed? Why has Mr Man- delson received such a bashing from some newspapers following the Mail's serialisa- tion this week? It is not as though Mr Robinson produced any single damning new disclosure about Mr Mandelson. There was a lot of fascinating shading in of what we already knew. The reaction of the Sun and other papers to the excerpts must be explained in the context of their general disenchantment with Mr Mandelson and New Labour. When he came back into the Cabinet they were mostly prepared to for- give and forget. Now, a year after his Cabi- net rehabilitation, they use his old errors to set about him all over again, only this time with a good deal more vigour. By serialis- ing the Robinson book, the Mail makes the running, with the Telegraph not far behind. But these papers never did much more than tolerate Mr Mandelson. It is the behaviour of his erstwhile supporter the Sun that is most interesting. Its influential political editor Trevor Kavanagh suggested on Tuesday that 'New Labour can never blossom until the Prime Minister learns to manage without this disruptive schemer'.
I don't say that Mr Kavanagh and the Sun's editor, David Yelland, are taking their new line from Rupert Murdoch. It is a mistake always to attribute every shift in policy to proprietors. Like a lot of other people, and a lot of other journalists, the boys at the Sun are disenchanted with the fiasco of the Dome for which no one certainly not Mr Mandelson — will take responsibility. Mr Mandelson's increas- ingly pro-euro statements have irritated the passionately Eurosceptic Sun, as they have the Mail and the Telegraph. The decline in the popularity of New Labour has generally emboldened the old right- wing press. As for Mr Mandelson, weighed down with a troublesome and time-consuming job in Northern Ireland, and for much of the week far from the capital, he finds it difficult to cultivate support and fight his corner.
Whatever happens, there will always be some journalists who will want to give him the benefit of the doubt — the Independent's Andrew Grice and Donald Macintyre (who has written a marvellous biography of Mandelson); the Telegraph's Rachel Sylvester; the Guardian's Patrick Wintour. Such firm friends, though, are in relatively short supply. Sentiment has turned against him even among former sympathisers. The Guardian's leader on Tuesday was far from supportive. The Mir- ror's leader on the same day was helpful, though the paper gave space to his arch enemy, Paul Routledge, to rage against him. Most significantly, Mr Mandelson is rowing with the Mirror over its (evidently correct) claim that he had said the press campaign against him was partly driven by homophobia. (I suspect that is a pretty marginal factor. No one has it in for Chris Smith on the same grounds.) When old friends fall out in public, you know that something is amiss.
It is conceivable, I suppose, that Peter Mandelson may still one day be foreign secretary. The point is that this man, who once instilled awe, even fear, in proprietors and editors and journalists, has been cut down to size. It is no longer possible for him to have a quiet word with a proprietor to soften his newspaper's coverage of the Dome or its criticisms of government poli- cy in Northern Ireland. No one would be cowed by him now. He is damaged goods. And because his bullying and arrogance have inevitably made him lots of enemies, we can be doubly sure that should he ever step out of line again, they will be eager to destroy him.
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