Why I do not want to be part of the lynch mob pursuing Peter Mandelson

FRANK JOHNSON

In August 1997 there appeared in The Spectator a prophetic editorial. This might be thought a not disinterested remark since, being editor at the time, I wrote the editorial. But there is justification, in the light of present events, in exhuming it here now. It was headed 'Go, And Spin No More'. It began: Until election day, 1 May, Mr Peter Mandelson's problem was Labour. Since 1 May, Labour's problem has been Mr Mandelson. On 1 May, Mr Mandelson served his primary purpose. He got Labour elected. Since then, he has become something of a bar to its being re-elected. He seems under the impression that government is one long re-election campaign. That is a sure way not to be re-elected. Voters sense that ministers' actions are not in the interests of the country, but in the interests of their holding on to their jobs.

Mr Mandelson had been manipulating the Sunday media in an attempt to distract attention from what, for the government, was embarrassing publicity concerning the private life of the Foreign Secretary, Mr Cook. The next passage in the editorial is especially relevant to this week's events:

Mr Mandelson could probably deny that he performed any of these machinations. That might literally be true. He would probably have got subordinates to perform them. But, as they say in the police and criminal fraternity, his dabs were all over the stuff.

The editorial went on to argue that, unlike many Labour politicians, who realised that to be re-elected the party would have to abandon many of its former policies, Mr Mandelson realised that it had to abandon all its former policies 'and embrace Thatcherism too'. Therefore:

... to be elected, Labour made a Faustian bargain . . . Mr Mandelson was the Mephistopheles. The party resents having to submit to him. It will blame him for evetything that goes wrong. Mr Mandelson's spinning and scheming will make it easier for the party to do so.... Mr Mandelson, in his present job of 'presenting' and 'co-ordinating' government policy, is an impediment to that success because he causes havoc and resentment.

This week's 'havoc and resentment' surely make this editorial look rather good. But it ended with a forecast that has been proved mistaken:

We do not believe that his talents are solely confined to spinning. He might well be good at governing. At the first reshuffle, he should be moved to an orthodox, departmental job. There he should toil rather than spin.

I wrote that this was what he 'should' do rather than what he would. That was a misjudgment. It assumed, not just that he should or would, but that he could. He was indeed moved, not just to an orthodox, departmental job, but to two: secretary for trade and industry, later secretary for Northern Ireland. He had to resign from both. In both resignations, it was his spinning that sealed his fate. On both occasions, when at bay, he toured the television studios in an attempt to spin his way out of trouble. It only made his trouble worse. By all reliable accounts, at both ministries, he toiled well. But I was wrong to think that, with him, toiling and spinning were mutually exclusive.

Not that spinning was, in either case, the main reason for his fall. The first fall was caused by his failing to declare that home loan. This second, and terminal, fall was caused by his giving the impression of having lied. I say 'giving the impression of having lied', partly because I do not want to be part of the pursuing lynch mob that calls him a liar in print only because it is now safe to do so, but mainly because 'the impression' of lying is all he gave. The impression may turn out to be the reality, though my own guess is that we shall never know.

But even if the QC's report concludes that he did not lie, has Mr Mandelson been done an injustice? His friend, the novelist Mr Robert Harris, thinks so. The case hinges on the fatal telephone call to Mr O'Brien, the Home Office minister dealing with immigration. Mr Mandelson at first said his civil service staff made the call. Then he remembered that he himself did. Then he resigned. Then he changed his mind again and said that, on reflection, his staff did.

These constant shifts, on the face of it, would appear to damn Mr Mandelson. He is spinning, but he cannot spin his story straight. In fact, they help his case. The confusion has more plausibility than any glib explanation. If he was lying, he had plenty of time to memorise the words of which the lie would consist. Just because he spun, it does not mean he lied. It just looked that way because of his notoriety as a spinner.

Mr Harris has been campaigning for a posthumous pardon. Thus Mr Mandelson is the Timothy Evans or James Hanratty of politics. Nothing can bring him back, but at least his family will have the comfort of knowing that Mr Mandelson never committed the crime for which he was hanged. In fact, the most recent book on the Evans case has him as guilty, and DNA may have established Hanratty's guilt too. All the more reason why we shall probably never be able to ascertain the guilt or innocence of Mr Mandelson.

Mr Harris preferred to say in an interview with the Daily Telegraph's Miss Rachel Sylvester: 'This is our Dreyfus affair — a very public miscarriage of justice.' Mr Harris, then, is our Zola. He hopes that his eloquent intervention will release Mr Mandelson from imprisonment on the Devil's Island that is the permanent London drinks party without his being among the most powerful guests. Mr Harris makes an overwhelming case for Mr Mandelson's not having been given a fair hearing: 'They asked him to go in 45 minutes without establishing all the facts' — referring to the meeting at No. 10 Downing Street between Mr Blair, Mr Mandelson and Mr Campbell.

But here the comparison with any judicial proceeding breaks down. In the Mandelson case, we are dealing with politics. His dismissal was not a judicial act, but a political one. The overwhelmingly likely explanation of Mr Mandelson's fate is that, because this was the second time that he had got the government into serious trouble, Mr Campbell decided that he had to go. Mr Campbell's complaint that Mr Mandelson had made him mislead the press was a pretext. Prime-ministerial press secretaries have to mislead the press all the time, If this was another minister, or the first time that Mr Mandelson had appeared to lie, Mr Campbell would have cheerfully misled the press in the line of duty. No one would have thought the less of Mr Campbell for it. But no, it was the Mandelson of old, the Mandelson of a previous resignation, and of a thousand spins gone by.

Politics felled him as it raised him. I was wrong. You can make a toiler out of a spinner, but you cannot take the spinning out of his toil.