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IAIN WATSON: When Peter Mandelson was summoned
to the Prime Minister's inner sanctum eighteen days ago his opponents assumed
he was heading for political oblivion. But this spectre of spin continues
to haunt Downing Street and further horrors are on the way - for the first
time his political supporters have stepped from the shadows and are telling
Tony Blair it's in his own interests not shut out his old ally forever.
LORD SAWYER: Give him any portfolio, give
him any case to make, and Peter, if he gets behind it, will make it in
a, in a manner which is hard to equal in the Parliamentary Labour Party,
now from my point of view, in Labour Party politics, this is a big asset,
and it's too big to squander.
LORNA FITZSIMONS MP: It is very frightening that
people are actually starting to think that because the media have pre-judged
you, because there is a lynch mob, therefore you're guilty. And we don't
allow that either in some of the most severe instances in the criminal
justice system, so why are we doing it in politics?
WATSON: Just as Peter Mandelson
was being dispatched from the cabinet for a second time, Sir Anthony Hammond
- a former treasury solicitor who also served at the Home Office - was
called in to set up an Inquiry; in the old days, that would have been enough
to kill off an inconvenient story.
ACTUALITY FROM THE TV SERIES - YES MINISTER
JIM: Well at least an
Inquiry gives us a little time.
HUMPHREY: So does a time bomb.
JIM: Haven't you got a
disposal squad?
HUMPHREY: Disposal squad?
JIM: Couldn't we get the
independent inquiry to exonerate the department?
HUMPHREY: Do you mean rig it?
JIM: No, no, no, no, no,
no, well, yes.
WATSON: So Whitehall inquiries
were traditionally designed to conceal more than they revealed - to smooth
things over, not shake them up. Whatever New Labour's detractors say about
the lack of radicalism, when it comes to inquiries, they've certainly broken
the mould. The Hammond inquiry could actually cause more problems than
it solves - and heighten, not diminish, party infighting, ahead of a general
election. Now Labour may want to talk about education and crime, but when
this Inquiry reports, the future of one man will continue to dominate the
debate.
PHIL WOOLAS MP: We don't know obviously
what the inquiry will say - it's possible it will exonerate Peter Mandelson,
and if that is the case, I can't see any reason why, after the general
election, some time in the future, that he couldn't play a role in government.
GORDON PRENTICE MP: I don't think Parliamentary
Labour Party would swallow it, I don't think the wider Labour Party would
welcome it, no sane person would suggest for one moment that there was
any prospect of Peter Mandelson returning to front rank politics in the
second term, if we get it, of a Labour Government.
WATSON: The Inquiry under Sir Anthony
Hammond is due to report to ministers at the end of the month and should
throw light on why, or whether Peter Mandelson was right to resign. What's
not in doubt is that the Home Office were contacted - either by Peter Mandelson
or his officials - when he was minister for the millennium dome, to ask
about rules on British citizenship - following a query by the Hinduja
brothers. And they just happened to have pledged around a million pounds
in sponsorship for the Greenwich folly.
What is at issue is whether Peter Mandelson telephoned the relevant Home
Office Minister, Mike O'Brien, personally, and then exercised undue pressure
to speed up a citizenship application. If Hammond concludes that Peter
Mandelson acted dishonourably, then the punishment won't just be personal
but political.
ANDREW LANSLEY MP: I think that creates a backdrop,
alongside other things, in which people think increasingly ill of this
government, where they don't trust what they say, where they feel that
they came into office claiming they'd uphold the highest standards in public
life and they have completely failed to deliver on that.
WATSON: But Peter Mandelson is
saying through friends that he was browbeaten from office before the facts
were established. A memo from his most recent set of officials, at the
Northern Ireland office, and leaked last week, threw doubts on the Home
Office's account that Peter Mandelson had personally contacted the Immigration
Minister Mike O'Brien. So if there's no proof he even phoned the relevant
minister, never mind sought to influence him, presumably complete exoneration
isn't out of the question.
WOOLAS; If it says he acted honourably,
and that mistakes were made but not intentionally, then I can't see why
after the general election, there shouldn't be no role for him in politics
if that is what the inquiry does show.
PRENTICE: In the presence of colleagues,
I asked Mike and I said to him, "do you have a clear recollection of having
this telephone conversation with Peter Mandelson?" and he looked me in
the eye and he said "yes." So who do we believe? Mike O'Brien, a well
respected Home Office Minister, a solicitor, or Peter Mandelson?
WATSON: Well, if Sir Anthony Hammond
chooses the latter, then Peter Mandelson's reputation could be restored.
But this may have the opposite effect on the Prime Minister if he's seen
to have acted as judge and jury before hearing the evidence.
LORD SAWYER: As far as I can read, I mean
Peter did suggest that the Inquiry should be carried out first, but you
know you can see it from both sides here; you can see the kind of panic
that would arise in Number Ten at the thought of another kind of possible
misdemeanour from Peter - and oh dear me, you know this is the man who
resigned once, we reinstated him, and now we're in trouble again. So there
would I think be an element of panic about Peter, let's say potentially,
being in trouble again.
NORMAN BAKER MP: I don't think Mr. Mandelson will
be exonerated, its difficult to see how that can occur. If he is exonerated,
then that clearly leaves the judgement in the balance as to the role of
Alistair Campbell and indeed the Prime Minister who shoved him out of office
so quickly on that particular Wednesday morning.
WATSON: While Labour sources expect
Peter Mandelson to be cleared of influencing the Hindujas citizenship
application, they hope the verdict on the telephone call will look like
a fudge.
Peter Mandelson says he
can't recall telephoning the Home Office personally about any possible
citizenship application from S. P. Hinduja. But senior Labour sources
are confident that Sir Anthony Hammond's inquiry will establish that a
telephone call did indeed take place. But ministers don't expect Peter
Mandelson to be branded a liar - instead, less damning language could be
deployed - perhaps a reference to 'an inadequate recollection of events'
or maybe a mention of 'flawed judgment' so not so much a whitewash - more
of a grey area.
ACTUALITY FROM THE TV SERIES YES MINISTER
HUMPHREY It is characteristic of
all committee discussions and decisions, that every member has a vivid
recollection of them and that every member's recollection of them differs
violently from every other member's recollection. Consequently we accept
the convention that the official decisions are those and only those which
have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials.
FITZSIMONS: The bottom line is the reason
he resigned was Mike O'Brien said he made the phone call and he couldn't
recall making the phone call. You know that is so...if you actually...history
will look on this as pathetic. The bottom line is the man resigned, one
of the chief architects of New Labour resigned over whether he could remember
making a phone call just saying I'm inquiring about policy. I mean let's
get this into context.
LANSLEY: I don't actually think
it was so much a matter of whether Peter Mandelson picked up a telephone,
the point was that he was engaged in raising an issue with another government
department on behalf of somebody from whom he was soliciting sponsorship
for the Dome; that was really what it was all about and that breached the
rules as far as I'm concerned
WATSON: So some people would find
a fudge far from satisfactory - but would it be enough to appease Peter
Mandelson? Although he's said he would accept the inquiry's findings,
his recent off the record briefings seem to have convinced Downing Street
of his volatility - any suggestion he's a liar could detonate a political
explosion
LORD SAWYER: To say that he made a mistake,
or he was indiscreet, or he perhaps shouldn't have done something that
he did, I think he would probably say: well look, fair enough, and he would
apologise for that. But I think that any implication that he purposely
set out to tell a lie in order to mislead any, either his colleagues, or
the Prime Minister, or civil servants, or anybody else, I think he would
find unacceptable.
BAKER: It's quite clear that Mr
Mandelson will not let this matter rest, and I think that's bad news for
Tony Blair and the government, they clearly want him to go quietly, he's
not going to do so.
PRENTICE: If the media becomes
fixated with Peter Mandelson in the run-up to a General Election and that
will obscure the real issues, that could do us real damage and I don't
pretend that it wouldn't, and I would just hope that Peter Mandelson puts
a lid on it
WATSON: The Prime Minister has
to handle Peter Mandelson with care. Tony Blair has to make it clear that
if Sir Anthony Hammond stops short of calling Peter Mandelson a liar, then
the door won't be closed forever on his former Cabinet colleague. The hope
is that this sort of incentive can keep Peter sweet through a General
Election campaign - although any ambiguity over his future status is likely
to be exploited gleefully by the opposition parties. But even within Labour's
ranks, this could prove controversial.
FITZSIMONS: You can't go on persecuting
him because you believe somehow he's got a flawed judgement or whatever
and if he is innocent then he should be treated as such and be as eligible
as anybody for promotion.
PRENTICE: I think Peter Mandelson
is in some sense in a state of denial, he cannot quite accept the fact
that his career has come to an abrupt end, I don't think there's any question
at all of rehabilitation
RECORDING OF "YES MINISTER":
JIM: "But Humphrey,
if these revelations are true..."
HUMPHREY: "Ah exactly, Minister,
IF... You could for instance have discussed the nature of truth.
JIM: "The Committee
isn't the least bit interested in the nature of truth. They're all MPs!"
WATSON: Whatever the results of
the inquiry, Peter Mandelson's future will be decided by predominantly
political factors. Some Blairites say he's needed to strengthen the Prime
Minister's hand against the overweening influence of the Chancellor, Gordon
Brown; while his opponents believe that, with the modernising gimmicks
behind it, the party can return to the task of appealing to its near-catatonic
core vote now that Peter Mandelson has gone
PRENTICE: I think even before this
happened there was a kind of recalibration taking place, that Mandelson's
idea of the project of course was to get really close to the Liberal Democrats,
coalition, snuggling up close to them, a kind of centrism which was dressed
up in terms of modernity. Now I'd say there's been a kind of stepping back
from that and the government now four years into its term is looking at
addressing the things that really matter to people in the industrial heartlands,
just the whole raft of policies that Peter Mandelson never concerned himself
with.
WOOLAS: I think what worries me
mostly about the affairs surrounding the Peter Mandelson resignation, is
the interpretation that somehow or other because Peter Mandelson had gone,
that the English public had all of a sudden become Bevanite Socialists.
Labour has its majority and has the mandate of the British people because
we are the New Labour Party, and if Peter Mandelson's resignation creates
a vacuum that will cause us problems in the future and it's very important
that we reassert our New Labour credentials
WATSON: Most Labour Party members
will be delighted that Tony Blair has rid himself of the man they see as
his Rasputin. But some of those who played a key role in past General Elections
fear that Labour's campaign machine this time round will be less effective
as a result.
SAWYER: It was very disappointing
because he is such an important person to the Labour Party; he's particularly
important at Millbank and in a campaign centre - his brain and his ability
to get things right inside the Party is probably irreplaceable. I guess
most people would say he couldn't come back into government but as you
know you should never say never in politics
WATSON: The first reaction in Labour's
ranks to Peter Mandelson's departure was a near collective sigh of relief;
but some won't be breathing quite so easily now. Whatever the conclusions
of the Hammond inquiry, when it reports just weeks before an expected General
Election - Downing Street may find that the man who was once one of Labour's
greatest assets has now become one of its biggest liabilities.
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