What’s missing from ‘embarrassing’ Mandelson files? – The Latest
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What revelations do the Mandelson files bring to light?
This is The Guardian.
You see Peter Mandelson operating at the peak of his kind of Machiavellian powers. This has some really uncomfortable material in it. There is no doubt that we are going to be hearing about it again and again and again. It feels like the obituary for this government was already being written. There are big gaps still in what we know, and I'm sure there is a lot more still to find out.
From The Guardian's Today In Focus, this is The Latest with me, Lucy Hough. Well, Archie Bland, our head of national news, we've had now a few more hours to go through the 1500 pages of Mandelson files that dropped yesterday. Have you read them all in full? No.
I've read quite a lot though.
What percentage would you say you've read?
I'm going to put it at 35%.
So I think it's safe to say from what we have been able to get across, I mean, obviously, there is much more that will come out as journalists have an opportunity to read them in their fullest capacity. But this sense that it's less a smoking gun on the appointment of Mandelson, Peter Mandelson as US ambassador, and more just this very excruciating peek behind the curtain on how this government operates.
How does Peter Mandelson's influence shape government dynamics?
I think that's right. That's partly because the Guardian's excellent reporting means that many of the smoking guns are already in the open. And indeed, the morning of the publication of this tranche of documents, we reported there is no reference to the mitigations that were supposedly made on the Mandelson appointment in them. So some of the smoking guns, as it were, are things that are not present as well as the things that are.
So these mitigations being the fact that the security vesting process has said, actually, this is a borderline case. There is some stuff that's been thrown up and we're going to need to put some mitigations in place to ensure that there's no risk to national security or potential conflicts of interest. It seems there's no evidence of those existing.
That's right. And even the fact that they haven't been recorded, even if they were made, suggests perhaps a less formal than you might hope for approach to how those things are handled. What we do get, as you said, is a really granular look at how the business of government is conducted. We've had these kind of glances in the past with past administrations. They're never a great look when you see how the sausage is made. But this has some really uncomfortable material in it. And you see Peter Mandelson operating at the peak of his kind of Machiavellian powers, manipulating just about everybody he can be in touch with and having some extremely disobliging conversations about Keir Starmer and the direction of the government with, in particular, Pat McFadden.
Yes, not a good day for Pat McFadden.
What criticisms does Mandelson have regarding Keir Starmer?
I do feel sorry for him because he seems to be one of the few people who didn't know, understand the disappearing message toggle on WhatsApp. I feel like there's a sort of age discriminatory factor at play there. But he sadly is really in the doghouse for comments that he's made about welfare that I think is going to be a tagline for opposition parties for some time to come.
Yeah, people might remember that Liam Byrne had hung around his neck during the last Labour government, the note that he left saying, I'm afraid there is no money left. And Pat McFadden will now have hung around his neck the expression, every meeting I have is, who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others? The thing about this is that... Interestingly enough, this is not actually the direction of the government he's talking about. He's talking about the Labour Party more generally. There might be people who think that Labour should be thinking about which taxes it needs to raise in order to make sure that the welfare state is working properly. But if anything, this is an indication of the fact that the government was firmly pressing against that direction of travel.
So I'm not sure that it is really the smoking gun on the kind of agenda of the Labour government that it is cracked up to be, but there is no doubt that we are going to be hearing about it again and again and again.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What revelations do the Mandelson files bring to light?
0:00–1:19
2
How does Peter Mandelson's influence shape government dynamics?
1:19–2:38
3
What criticisms does Mandelson have regarding Keir Starmer?
2:38–4:19
4
What are the implications of the missing mitigations in Mandelson's vetting process?
4:19–5:59
5
How does the correspondence reflect on the Labour Party's leadership?
5:59–7:38
6
What concerns arise from the redactions in the Mandelson files?
7:38–8:59
7
What unanswered questions remain about the Mandelson documents?
8:59–11:00