Mandelson & New Labour, the end of the affair. The Mandelson files in historical context.
The media is focused on the release of over a thousand pages of documents from or to Peter Mandelson in the period when he was being appointed and became US Ambassador in 2024/5.
The media, most of which lacks historical context, have picked up that Mandelson is criticising Starmer. Whatever one’s view of the current Government (clearly I’m no fan) Mandelson is attacking it from the right. Note his criticism of Wes Streeting for raising the genocide in Gaza in July 2025 for example (again no fan of Streeting, and he no doubt was under Constituency pressure to make the point, but at least he did make it).
The following history of Mandelsonism appeared in the Morning Star in February 2026.
Channel Four aired a three part documentary, The Tony Blair Story, in mid-February 2026. 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.
Seamus 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-July 1998). Effectively this meant he was policy advisor 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
National Archives File PREM 49/244
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 non-existent during his leadership. Mandelson however was still promoting his project and this time hit upon 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 suggests the end of this 40 year affair. Understanding why it existed and what it meant is essential for the left.
Aditya Chakrabortty has written in the Guardian about how the New Labour period & some of its leading figures still dominates British politics https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/04/zombie-blairites-british-politics-in-their-grip?CMP=share_btn_url
