Peter Mandelson says he is loyal to Ed Miliband; he has a funny way of showing it. The extracts from the new chapter of the paperback edition of his book, The Third Man, published on Labour Uncut and Labour List, provide much ammunition for the Tories. Labour’s leadership election rules, for example, Mandelson claims gave a deciding voice to union organisers, many of whom were not Labour members. What nonsense! He merely wishes to prevent hundreds of thousands of affiliated members from voting. But the real lesson is that the Dark Lord still doesn’t understand why we lost. He warns that unless Ed Miliband makes of Labour:
a worthy successor to Tony Blair’s version of New Labour while retaining its essence…. he will help Cameron undo all the work we did at the outset of New Labour – making us once again distrusted on the economy and taxation, pushing us back into the box marked ‘tribalism’, driving apart the progressive forces in politics and placing Labour once again on the wrong side of people’s aspirations.
He forgets that the Lib Dems were to the Left of Labour on the economy and taxation and many other issues, and still we lost. And over half their supporters have since defected, mainly to Labour. If only Gordon Brown had clearly broken with Blair’s failed record, the record that lost Labour four million votes whilst he was Prime Minister, we might have won. Instead he gave in to the threats of the Blairites, chose Mandelson as his deputy and we lost.
