CHANNEL 4 aired a three-part documentary, The Tony Blair Story, in mid-February. It was a history of the present back to the 1980s, albeit other histories are available.

One person, close to Blair, who was interviewed in each episode, was Peter Mandelson. Each episode also concluded with a disclaimer that Mandelson had been interviewed before the full details of his connection to Jeffrey Epstein was known.

It was, however, a reminder — needed by the few if not the many — that Mandelson was central to the New Labour project and remained so until very recently.

Mandelson first appeared in the Labour Party when Neil Kinnock became leader in the 1980s and Tony Benn noted in his diary at the time that he was not good news for the future of Labour. John Smith shunned Mandelson, but after his death, he became closely associated, using the codename “Bobby,” with Tony Blair’s successful attempt to become Labour leader.

Mandelson’s political methods are well known, but it was the politics he promoted that was and is really key. In 1996 he published a book, The Blair Revolution, with former SDP activist Roger Liddle.

Seumas Milne, then a Guardian journalist, reviewed the book in the London Review of Books in April 1996 and had this to say about what Mandelson and Liddle were proposing: “Coalition with the Liberal Democrats, public-sector no-strike deals, workfare for the long-term unemployed, expansion of private pensions and scepticism towards universal benefits…”

Mandelson held various ministerial positions in the early New Labour years from 1997 and he was also sacked twice by Blair for actual or alleged breaking of ministerial rules.

Thanks to government papers released by the National Archives at the start of 2022 we do have a record of Mandelson’s vision for Labour at the time he was minister without portfolio (May 1997 to July 1998). Effectively this meant he was policy adviser to Blair and the papers contain a note he sent to him about what he thought New Labour should be.

It read in part: “Its political genesis is a synthesis between the historical position of left and right. It is too simplistic to say it adopts ‘left’ values but is rightward in how to achieve them. It is probably more accurate to say that it has left values but is open about to achieve them and recognises that it was the right, not the left, that up to the end of the ’80s was prepared to think more freely. Privatisation of certain industries or the sale of council homes or greater autonomy for schools could have been left ideas.”

We can see here the practical impact of the New Times policy pursued by Marxism Today. Understanding that Thatcherism had become a hegemonic project on the right, Mandelson and Blair sought to emulate it with a few tweaks. As Stuart Hall later noted in a sharp criticism, it wasn’t the hegemonic project that was the problem — it was the failure to see, likely deliberate, that it had to be built on the left not the right.

Mandelson’s influence was minimal when Ed Miliband became Labour leader and, as Jeremy Corbyn underlined in a recent Commons speech, was non-existent during his leadership. Mandelson however was still promoting his project and this time hit upon Keir Starmer, someone with no specific left politics, to head it up.

At a party held in a central London pub in 2022 to celebrate 25 years of New Labour, Mandelson was reported as leading a chant of “Viva New Labour.”

Recent events suggest the end of this 40-year affair. Understanding why it existed and what it meant is essential for the left.