On Sunday 18 July Andrew Marr interviewed the former Business secretary Peter Mandelson. Please note 'The Andrew Marr Show' must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.  Peter Mandelson defends The Third Man from Labour party critics |
ANDREW MARR: Peter Mandelson's memoir is a dark account of the psycho drama that went on between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown - almost Venetian in its intrigue. It's been responded to by quite angry Labour MPs over the last few days, but the man himself is here to discuss it with me now. Lord Mandelson, thank you very much indeed. LORD MANDELSON: Good morning, Andrew. ANDREW MARR: Good morning. Now … LORD MANDELSON: Can I just say this? It's got a lot more light in it than dark. I know for some people inside the Westminster village, it will have come … dropped like a sort of rather controversial, explosive bombshell, but you know I didn't write this book for people inside the beltway. I wrote it for the general voting public, and I knew right from the beginning that it had to be honest and it had to offer a compelling, well written story. And I tell you this. If I'd pulled all my punches and if I had just filled every page with leaden prose, I'd be sitting here a lot less comfortably than I am. ANDREW MARR: Well we're all glad that you didn't do that, Lord Mandelson. And yet a great deal of the story that you tell, particularly about Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, is exactly the kind of ferociously mutually angry story that was being reported at the time and that you and people like you were describing to people like me as "tittle-tattle". LORD MANDELSON: No, actually I got a lot more … ANDREW MARR: There's hundreds of pages of it. LORD MANDELSON: … I got a lot more honest and outspoken as time went on, and the period where I was most outspoken in defence of Tony Blair was that period after the Iraq War in 2003-2004 and the couple of years after that where the relations between Gordon and Tony did, yes, get pretty … ANDREW MARR: Terrible. LORD MANDELSON: They got terrible. But the point about those relations is that for all the period before that, yes there were tensions - and politics is about people, it's about ideas and arguments - but it was a creative tension. If it hadn't been, Andrew, if it hadn't been, we wouldn't have been able to rebuild the Labour party, to transform it into New Labour, to win all the elections that we did, and to govern with considerable achievement as we did. Now that's the productive, positive, creative side of that relationship. But, yes - and I acknowledge this in the book - after the Iraq War and up to the period when Tony was forced from office, things were not beautiful. ANDREW MARR: There are pages and pages and pages and pages and pages of detailed accounts of what Tony Blair thought about Gordon Brown, and the picture built up … LORD MANDELSON: (over) Particularly in that middle period. ANDREW MARR: Well before and after too. LORD MANDELSON: Well … ANDREW MARR: And the picture built up by it - and I would say anyone reading this book would come to the same conclusion - is that Tony Blair thought Gordon Brown was not fit to be Prime Minister. I mean he says that in terms. He is highly critical of his behaviour as Chancellor. And the reader is therefore left asking why, if that's what Tony Blair thought about Gordon Brown, was Gordon Brown left and allowed to become Prime Minister? LORD MANDELSON: Yes, but he was also very praising of Gordon as Chancellor and he knew how indispensable to our economic management and performance … ANDREW MARR: "Terrible micro chancellor" you quote him saying. You know interfering, far too many regulations, wasting money. LORD MANDELSON: (over) Yuh, but you have to understand, you have to understand what that was in relation to, Andrew. Look, if you take the whole range and the whole gamut of what we set out to do as a government - all the different programmes and policies and legislative activity - I would say to you that we achieved 80% of what we set out to achieve. Let me make my point, please - 80% of what we set out to achieve. But in certain respects - reform of education and schools and of the National Health Service - it's true, Tony wanted to go further and quicker than Gordon, and Gordon put on a bit of a brake in those areas. But even then, look at the transformative investment that went into our schools, into our hospitals, you know you have to look, you have to look at the positive … ANDREW MARR: (over) You admit in this book you didn't get enough. You didn't get enough out of that money, did you? LORD MANDELSON: No - no, no, no, no, no. What I believe very strongly is that we undertook a colossal catch-up investment over the last ten years or more. But the foundations of reform in public services that Tony laid, he would have liked to have taken further than he was able to do. ANDREW MARR: Can I … LORD MANDELSON: But that doesn't detract from the colossal achievement that New Labour made in transforming our public services. So you have to look at the thing in the round. And I hope that when people read the book because of all the people, all the people who've been sounding off, all the people … ANDREW MARR: (over) Well I've read it, I've read it in great detail. LORD MANDELSON: You have, but those who were sounding off on Thursday and Friday - and I checked with one or two of the leadership contenders yesterday - they hadn't read the book. (laughs) ANDREW MARR: I've read every word of it, you'll be pleased to hear. And you do talk about the achievements, but I would say there are, for every page about the achievements, there's probably twenty or thirty pages about the rows - which is what I want to come … LORD MANDELSON: But do you know why that … ANDREW MARR: Let me come onto that. LORD MANDELSON: Okay. ANDREW MARR: I want to ask you particularly about the way that Tony Blair comes across in this book because he's oddly passive a lot of the time. He is complaining a lot … (Mandelson tries to interject) He's complaining a lot about Gordon Brown - constantly moaning about him and so on, constantly wishing he could do more, constantly thinking maybe he should split up the Treasury, he wants to get more reforms through - and yet he doesn't do any of this stuff. You quote Lord Burt saying: 'The odd thing about Tony Blair is that you know he's got some of the instincts of command, but when people don't do what he tells them, he sort of doesn't do anything about it'. LORD MANDELSON: Look, Andrew, you're generalising from the particular. I don't blame you for doing so … ANDREW MARR: It's just an interesting quote, I thought. LORD MANDELSON: … because you have to do that in an interview. And you're taking what Tony wanted to do - as I've said to go further and faster in some public areas of public service reform, including incidentally in reform of our welfare system and also Tony spotted towards the end of his premiership that we were not going to be able to sustain the scale and rate of increase of public spending that we had undertaken to date. ANDREW MARR: And pushed Gordon Brown to do something about it and failed. LORD MANDELSON: Yes. And these are very interesting issues and debates that took place in government … ANDREW MARR: Yuh. LORD MANDELSON: … which I have brought out. Why have I done that? Partly because I think there's a very important and interesting story to be told about the government, but also because I think it's important for the future - both for the voting public but also for members of the Labour party. ANDREW MARR: Overall though, it's a pretty wretched story - the relationship between these people. It goes on and on and on. LORD MANDELSON: Andrew … ANDREW MARR: So and so hates so and so; so and so's cross with … LORD MANDELSON: Andrew, you're not characterising this book accurately. ANDREW MARR: There are hundreds of pages of this, Peter Mandelson. LORD MANDELSON: Yes. But look, when you're writing a book like this, inevitably - and I've drawn on 25 years of archive material, 25 years of diary notes and contemporaneous records - inevitably you are going to devote more time explaining and spelling out where we disagreed rather than where we quickly agreed on things. That does not detract from the fact that we transformed the Labour party, and as a result changed the face of British politics … ANDREW MARR: Okay. LORD MANDELSON: … and, as I say, achieved 80% of what we set out to do in that government. ANDREW MARR: Let's turn to some specifics, if we could. An interesting account of the negotiations with the Liberal Democrats … LORD MANDELSON: Yes. ANDREW MARR: … just before this current coalition was formed. LORD MANDELSON: Yuh. ANDREW MARR: Do you think that had Gordon Brown not been there, a deal could have been done? Or had he said right away, "I'm going to stand to one side; we'll have another leader" that you could have done a deal with the Liberal Democrats? LORD MANDELSON: Interesting question, but I think two things. One, I don't think the arithmetic stacked up whoever was Leader of the Labour party. And, secondly, I think whoever had been Leader would needed to have done a lot more sort of creative digging and nurturing of the relationship with the Liberal Democrats than simply coming to it in the you know last 48 hour sort of fag end of a Labour government. So … ANDREW MARR: You were leading the negotiations, we should say, in all of this. LORD MANDELSON: I was. ANDREW MARR: Did you, therefore, go into these negotiations thinking you know what, I'll give it my best shot, but it's not going to happen this deal, it's not going to work? LORD MANDELSON: Well I explain all this in the book, and it's a good story. But I thought that my job was to give it the best shot - to probe, to test the option - because I didn't know whether the Conservatives would be able or would want to form a minority government. I didn't know whether they were going to be able to form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. I had to test that option of a Labour-Lib Dem coalition. Now if you're asking me very sort of frankly what I thought the chances of success were, I thought they were significantly less than 50%. But Gordon Brown had a duty, a constitutional obligation to remain in office … ANDREW MARR: Absolutely. LORD MANDELSON: … whilst these things were tested, and that's what I did on his behalf. ANDREW MARR: Another area I find very interesting was the whole Iraq War position. You write about that interestingly in various ways. There's a moment when you say to Tony Blair, "But what are we going to do after the war, once we've invaded?" And he sort of said well … LORD MANDELSON: That was in January 2003, I said that. ANDREW MARR: That's right. And he says, "Well that's up to the Americans." And I get the impression from the book that you were extremely concerned about what was going to happen after the war … LORD MANDELSON: (over) Well I wasn't involved … (laughs) ANDREW MARR: I know, I know, but it does sound … LORD MANDELSON: I wish I had been. ANDREW MARR: Sure. But it does sound like … rather dismissive. And it's an absolutely crucial question, of course, because of what happened in Iraq after the war, how many people lost their lives. LORD MANDELSON: By that time, I was out of government … ANDREW MARR: Sure. LORD MANDELSON: … famously. And not only was I being a diligent Hartlepool Member of Parliament. I was also travelling in the world. I decided to go East rather than West. I went to Asia. And I travelled in and spoke and made speeches in many Muslim countries, and what came home to me was, to put it mildly, a lack of understanding, a sort of grasp of what we were doing in paving the way for this intervention in Iraq, and I thought it needed explaining and justifying. I also believed - as people had been saying to me in the Gulf, in the Middle East and elsewhere - fine, we don't want Saddam Hussein hanging around here for a moment longer than is necessary. We'd like to see the back of him; we want to be shot of him. But just do please focus on what happens after. Iraq is a big … ANDREW MARR: (over) And they didn't. LORD MANDELSON: Iraq is a big and complicated country. You need to know how you're going to run it after. ANDREW MARR: And they didn't focus, did they? LORD MANDELSON: I think that we pressed very hard as a government. I wasn't a member of it, but I believe that the Prime Minister pressed very hard and people like Colin Powell in the State Department prepared manuals, volumes, and they were all swept off the desk with one sweep of the Defence Secretary's arm into the wastepaper bin, and we all paid a huge price for that. ANDREW MARR: The death of Dr Kelly at the same time, you devote some interesting words to. LORD MANDELSON: A bit later on, yuh. ANDREW MARR: Yuh, a little later on. And you talk about Tony Blair being in his 'best barrister Blair mode' - the difference between leaking a name and confirming a name. And again I get the impression that you were uncomfortable about that episode. LORD MANDELSON: No, what I said was that the moment people knew that there was a name, we had to prepare for the eventuality that that name was going to come out. I mean it was and always is thus - that you can't keep things to yourself indefinitely. We had to pave the way for that, but not sort of you know put his name out there in a way that would put colossal pressure on him. No, where I was less happy was after the Hutton Report was published. I thought that Hutton, finding as he did as it were in the government's favour on all these issues, it was more becoming for the government just to accept that in a sort of modest and un-hubristic way. And that on the day it was published was not the case and I regretted that. ANDREW MARR: Coming much nearer to the present, it's pretty clear that you and everybody else around the top of government in the last couple of years thought that there was a Gordon problem when it came to the electorate certainly. You may have liked what he was doing on the global economy and so on, but you understood that there was a really big problem. There were a series of they weren't even coups, but they started to go that way. They were going towards that way. You could have removed the Prime Minister probably yourself. LORD MANDELSON: No, I could not. ANDREW MARR: Could you not? LORD MANDELSON: No, I could not. ANDREW MARR: If you had got behind James Purnell, you could have made that change. LORD MANDELSON: Andrew, I didn't know what James Purnell was doing. The first thing I heard about it was on the news at 10 o'clock. I didn't know what Geoff Hoon or Patricia Hewitt and other cabinet members that they were supposedly talking to were going to do until the day. ANDREW MARR: (over) You go into David Miliband - "You could be a sherpa to him" - and he must have wondered what that meant? LORD MANDELSON: Yes, but you're taking … ANDREW MARR: Climbing to the … LORD MANDELSON: … you're taking one exchange between two people totally out of context and eliding the two time periods, which you're not entitled to do. Look, let me just say this about Gordon. (Marr laughs) He did not have a brilliant first year in office. Okay, I came back in 2008 when the crisis struck, and in a sense you know he came to the rescue of the world economy and the world economy rather came to the rescue of Gordon. But then things started dipping down … ANDREW MARR: They certainly did, yes. LORD MANDELSON: … dipping down again. When James resigned in 2009, we were still wading through and getting through that economic crisis. I did not think that we were entitled to simply switch horses for our own political convenience and have all the plans and the fight back that we were implementing thrown into sort of temporary disarray. I also thought, incidentally, that if we did change horses, we'd have to call the General Election, which would not have been a funny thing in the middle of an economic crisis. And then the following January … Look, there was not a consensual alternative candidate for people to plump for. I'm not pretending … ANDREW MARR: (over) Do you think just before that … LORD MANDELSON: (over) … I'm not pretending that we didn't agonise and I'm not pretending … ANDREW MARR: Sure, sure. LORD MANDELSON: … that there were not some pretty raw discussions, but frankly I came back not to bury Gordon but to help him and support him. And I never lost sight of that and I never wanted to break that bond of loyalty to him. ANDREW MARR: But David Miliband could have replaced him possibly in 2008. LORD MANDELSON: Not by himself. ANDREW MARR: Not by himself, but … That's why I keep asking you, you know. LORD MANDELSON: (laughs) Not by himself. Look, he needed a group of senior cabinet ministers to say this is what we want to do, this is who we want to get behind, and this is what we need to achieve in order to whatever. That group of cabinet ministers were not there and I was not going to and could not have led that myself as if I can just sort of pull a switch or a press a button and say, "Abracadabra, you know you've now got a new Leader." Politics isn't like that. ANDREW MARR: Sure. Another gripping episode really is how you deal with the deficit in the last period where I mean, as I've said, Tony Blair thought there was a problem earlier on about government spending. But then we have Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, clearly suggesting that he wants pretty deep cuts, he wants real cuts, and Gordon Brown will not use the word. LORD MANDELSON: Not quite as simple as that. Look, what did we agree on? That we needed to fight back against the crisis and to stop recession turning into depression; that borrowing would have to soar because Treasury revenues to finance that fight back were collapsing; that we needed to have a deficit reduction programme in place - and we put that in place - but that in the meantime, although there would need to be an exit from that stimulus, there should be no rush for the exit and in the meantime, during 2010, we should keep public spending up. Where we disagreed was that I, Alastair, thought we should do more to acknowledge the implications and the consequences of that borrowing and that deficit that Gordon was prepared to do at that time. ANDREW MARR: And if you'd been listened to at the time, perhaps the country would be in a better state now? LORD MANDELSON: I thought that if we were going to attack the savagery and extremism of the Tories' policies, we needed to make very clear that our own plans were credible and realistic. We didn't do that to the extent I thought we needed to do and should have done. ANDREW MARR: Lord Mandelson, we could talk all day - but for now … LORD MANDELSON: (over) I'll come back. ANDREW MARR: … thank you very much indeed. Come back, exactly. INTERVIEW ENDS
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