Mandelson's legacy

In the wake of the Ecclestone affair, LLB warned that the insensitivity of the New Labour hierarchy to potential conflicts of interest would land the Party in trouble, and so it has proved. The departure of Mandelson and Robertson from the Cabinet was a Christmas bonus, but there is no sign that lessons have been learned. Indeed, not a week passes without further evidence of New Labour's increasing entanglement with big business, the most powerful and least accountable "special interest" in the country.

Under the present government, big business has made unprecedented inroads into our civic fabric, colonising education, health, transport, local authorities and the criminal justice system. At the same time, our Party now accepts funds from many of the corporations benefiting from this process, as well as an unsavoury crowd of arms manufacturers, human rights violators, and wreckers of the environment. For all its talk of democratic reform, New Labour is busy entrenching the undemocratic power of large-scale private enterprises over the public domain.

The appointment of former Tory minister John Wakeham to chair the commission on Lords' reform is a case in point. This is the same Wakeham who, as head of the Press Complaints Commission, has proved himself a faithful servant of the newspaper barons, who, in turn, enjoy direct links to 10 Downing Street. Wakeham recently refused even to hear the shocking case of Greg Palast, the journalist who exposed the New Labour cash-for-access scam. Millbank officials colluded with Mirror reporters in fabricating a banner headline, front page "sex pest" charge against Palast, a charge which has now been entirely discredited.

Speaking to a meeting of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, Palast criticised the media for trivialising "this incredible and corrosive relationship between business and government. Lobbyists waltzed Tescos through John Prescott's back door, the Transport White Paper was delayed, and proposals for a supermarket car park tax vanished. Prescott's own task force found out in the press."

As for Mandelson himself, no one would expect LLB to do other than celebrate his humiliation. However, his legacy to the Party is dreadful. With the exception of his friend Murdoch, he did more than any other individual to corrupt political discourse in contemporary Britain. The casual cynicism in regard to telling the truth highlighted by his handling of the Robinson loan has been his modus operandi throughout. Soundbites have been used not only as a substitute for policies, but as a cloak for the pursuit of special interests.

Unfortunately, the Mandelson method will survive his departure. He has spawned a host of "little Mandelsons" at every level of the Labour Party, and unless their influence is removed, this Labour Government will be principally remembered for its elevation of cronyism to an instrument of policy.

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