The Third Man: Life at the Heart of New Labour

Self-aggrandising and obsessed with long-past personal conflicts, Peter Mandelson's political biography reveals a surprising unworldly side to New Labour's master of spin.

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Revealing why he took the title of his memoirs from Graham Greene's tale of intrigue and deception in post-war Vienna, Peter Mandelson writes that for most of his time in government, his influence was most strongly felt behind the scenes. In the shadows, as he puts it. And yet, of course, there is a more obvious interpretation. Of the three names most strongly associated with the New Labour project, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown both achieved high office. By contrast, Mandelson's excursions into the open waters of government were brief, and largely catastrophic. Lurking in the background though, he was a formidable political operator.

Here is classic Mandelson, reminding us in the second paragraph of his introduction that in the early days of New Labour the trio were so close the media dubbed them "The Three Musketeers". Almost in the same breath though, he assures the reader that calling his book The Third Man is not out of some kind of "feigned modesty", but rather that "there is an obvious distinction between us". Simply that they were both prime ministers and he wasn't - although he doesn't say this.

Failure to achieve governmental success clearly rankles with the now Baron Mandelson. Some of this must be attributed to his background. If anyone in the Labour party could be said to have blue blood, it is Mandelson. His mother was the daughter of Herbert Morrison, one of the grandees of 20th-century British socialism. One of the party's first MPs, Morrison eventually rose to the office of deputy prime minister under Clement Attlee, but his reputation rests on his fondness for large-scale public works, especially the Festival of Britain. Conceived after the Second World War as a way to lift post-conflict gloom, the event briefly added the futuristic, cigar-shaped Skylon to London's horizon and, more permanently, the Royal Festival Hall.

By contrast, Peter's father sold advertising for the weekly Jewish Chronicle newspaper, and the Mandelson upbringing was pretty much typical of a north London leftish, Jewish middle-class family. As a boy, he was packed off to the state-funded Hendon County Grammar School, rather than one of the local private schools. The place nevertheless had a decent academic record. Home was Hampstead Garden Suburb, conceived in the early part of the century as a classless utopian village community, but already a solid middle-class ghetto by the time the Mandelson family moved in. Politically it was slightly to the right of Hampstead itself and left of Golders Green.

In this environment, which included visits to 10 Downing Street, it was generally accepted that young Mandelson would embrace the Labour party, much as some of his contemporaries might pledge undying loyalty to Arsenal or Tottenham Hotspur football clubs. By the time he was in his teens, young Peter had revived the Hendon branch of the Young Socialists, led a failed uprising against the prefect system at school and had been ejected from Hendon Town Hall for heckling the local Conservative party candidate during the 1970 general election campaign.

After leaving school and before taking up his place at Oxford, he spent what would now be called a gap year working with voluntary organisations in Tanzania, encouraged and assisted by Trevor Huddlestone, the Bishop of Stepney, a ferocious campaigner against apartheid. At university he became active in various left-wing international student organisations and joined a UN-sponsored circuit of the Middle East that ended with the publication of an article in his father's newspaper calling for a Palestinian state.

All of this suggests, on paper, that Mandelson could never have been anything other than a political animal even though his view of politics appears to be far more tactical than ideological. We think of Mandelson as the ultimate fixer, or, as he puts it: "Someone who once embodied New Labour's reputation for spin and control freakery." Supporting successive Labour leaders, including Neil Kinnock, briefly John Smith and then, above all, Tony Blair, he managed to drag the Labour party away from the far left, trade union-dominated policies that seemed likely to condemn it to permanent opposition and transform it into New Labour, whose red rose logo was enticing enough to attract the voters of Middle England.

Reading Mandelson's memoirs, though, it becomes clear that this was never going to be enough. He is close to being tormented by his failure as a politician, but equally by his relationship with Gordon Brown, which dominates the book literally from the first page, with a summons to Downing Street from a man who, as Mandelson puts it, "had waged an insurgency" against both Blair and those closest to him. He clearly thinks he was a marked man after Brown decided that he had "schemed behind his back" in the 1994 leadership contest that Blair won.

His "return to the heart of government" in 2008 at Brown's invitation left him "in a daze". At the time the prime minister's popularity was on a precipitous slide; to most, bringing back the old master of the dark arts looked like an act of desperation. For Mandelson, however, it was an act of reconciliation. He writes about the whole affairwith giddy excitement, even describing the rather dull position of business secretary as something that "might turn out to be the most important and fulfilling of my political life".

What is odd is that the rest of the book is largely a takedown of Brown. He blames Brown's supporters for stirring up trouble in the two scandals that forced him from office in 1998 and 2001, and accuses Brown himself of undermining the Blair premiership almost from the start. Thus, the Brown camp is held responsible for leaking the details of a large and undisclosed interest-free loan given to Mandelson to buy an upmarket west London property by a wealthy supporter of the Labour party. The incident, which created a media storm, forced his first resignation. "Gordon had always wanted to get even, or at least cut me down to size," he writes. "And now he had."

The odd thing about all of this, is that Mandelson comes across as slightly surprised that people might dislike him or feel betrayed or deceived by his actions. Perhaps this book is just a whitewash, like so many political autobiographies, designed to make him look good, or at least better than the general perception. Perhaps he is just too vain and egotistical - the book includes pages of celebrity photos, Peter with Mick Jagger, Peter with Bill Clinton, Peter with the Queen.

On the other hand, perhaps he genuinely can't work out why just doing what he saw as his job - making the Labour party electable and keeping it in power - might have hurt some people along the way and left them bitter or angry in the process. It's an odd conclusion. Peter Mandelson has been charged with many faults before now, but naivety was never one of them.

James Langton edits the Weekender section of The National