Lord Mandelson: Lord Speaker's Corner

In this episode

‘Born into the Labour Party’, Lord Mandelson began a career of campaigning at school, where he was reprimanded by his grammar school headteacher for advocating for comprehensive education.

‘It was very difficult in the 1980s. It made me, of course wonder whether I could ever be a Member of Parliament… And that's when I discovered the innate decency of human beings.’

In this often personal interview, Lord Mandelson reflects on the difficulties he faced when he first stood for selection in Hartlepool in 1989 having been outed as a gay man by the News of the World in 1987. He also talks about how the people of Hartlepool rallied behind him in the selection process to become their Labour candidate following an attack by his opponent.

Lord Mandelson explains that he ‘loved being a minister’ and how his experience in television helped him prepare for the task of getting the public onboard with difficult decisions. He also discusses his experience of being in government, from his roles as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and Business Secretary and the need for ‘big goals, big missions, clear policies consistently pursued over a long period.’

‘Now, this is a constantly flowing river of poison, of polarisation, of people being mean to and about everyone else. And my advice to politicians now is get off it. I'm not on Twitter.’

Lord Mandelson also reflects on the changing political landscape with the rise of AI and social media culture today, warning colleagues to ‘Get off it, go out on the doorstep, talk to the public.’

‘A lot of clear, honest debate goes by the board, because people are so busy taking chunks out of each other. That's fine. That's the adversarial bit of politics. Our end of the parliamentary system is different. It's about scrutiny, it's about debate, it's about revising, it's about advising.’

Finally, Lord Mandelson offers his perspective on the differences between the two Houses of Parliament, plans for reform and what might be next for him, telling the Lord Speaker ‘I'm looking forward to creating a third career.’

Listen now

• Listen online
• Apple podcasts
• Spotify
• See a full list of podcast platforms

Other episodes

• See a full list of episodes

Watch now

Transcript

Lord Speaker:

Lord Mandelson, Peter, welcome to Lord Speaker's Corner. I'll take you back to your early time. You're the grandson of a famous politician, Herbert Morrison, Deputy Prime Minister, 1945 to '51. You have met, if I remember, 14 Prime Ministers including Clem Attlee whom Harold Wilson introduced you to in the 1960s. So is it safe to say it's in the blood from an early age?

Lord Mandelson:

I think it's safe to say that I am biologically attached to politics and the Labour Party. I mean, most politicians like me like to set out the political journey that they took throughout their lives. I'm afraid my political journey ended before it started. I was literally born into the Labour Party and it remained my home, my family ever since.

For some reason too, I seem to have been recurringly dogged by controversy all my life. I don't know why. I mean, I started being controversial when I was at school and my headmaster denounced me in front of the school assembly as an industrial militant who was trying to tear apart the fabric of the school community. And that was because I was campaigning at the time for comprehensive education. He didn't like that, because he was the head of a state grammar school and it sort of rather continued. Even in my first job when I left Oxford University, I went into the economic department of the TUC and that became controversial. They thought I was far too political and that ended prematurely. Then I was controversial when the National Executive Committee of the party divided over whether to appoint me as the campaign director in the 1980s. And then again in the New Labour years, all these people operating in the dark, that's when I became the Prince of Darkness. I mean, I hope now that I'm-

Lord Speaker:

Who labelled you as Prince of Darkness?

Lord Mandelson:

Private Eye. It actually came from something that Clare Short had said. She bemoaned in the 1990s these people surrounding Tony Blair who operated in the dark. Anyway, now I am the Dark Lord, [laughter] no longer the prince, and I hope to lead a rather more sober, quiet and uncontroversial existence in your House.

Lord Speaker:

Good. Well, I remember being quite amused when you said that in your family car journeys, the game you played was looking at constituencies and remembering the MPs.

Lord Mandelson:

It was ridiculous. I was very good at it, I have to say. But I mean my parents were driven to distraction and my poor brother was bored to tears, but I liked them to name constituencies and then I would tell them who the MP was. I mean, ridiculous.

Lord Speaker:

And then you became a councillor in Lambeth and I think you got disillusioned with ‘Red Ted and his socialist kingdom.’

Lord Mandelson:

I think I had two defining political experiences when I was younger. One was, as I say, working in the economic department at the TUC in the 1970s during the period of the Jim Callaghan Labour government when the trade union thought they were jointly running the country. And whilst I believe that the Labour Party and the trade unions should remain close, I don't think they're interchangeable in their roles. And I formed a view then about how the party and a Labour government and the trade unions should operate in slightly different spheres.

Then I became a councillor in Lambeth in the early '80s during the sort of heyday of the far left, the so-called ‘loony left’. Ted Knight was a Trotskyist, the leader of the council, and I was in the minority of the group who fiercely opposed him. And that was a defining experience for me, John, because I mean, although apart from one or two excursions in my political life, I've always remained broadly speaking with the same political outlook.

I am a centrist Labour person, rather as my grandfather was. My grandfather who was, as you said, Herbert Morrison, the first secretary of the London Labour Party. He was the first Labour leader of the London County Council in the 1930s and then was Attlee's deputy. His view was very strongly that the Labour Party was a national party or it was nothing. It had to appeal across geographic, social, class, professional boundaries. It had to represent and speak for the country as a whole, and I'm very much my grandfather's grandson. But what I saw in Lambeth was a very, very different Labour Party, a very different outlook. And I thought that these people were not only completely alien to the traditions, the social democratic traditions of the Labour Party, but were also colossally electorally damaging to the Labour Party. And that's why, when the time came in the 1980s after I'd worked in Westminster as a shadow cabinet researcher and parliamentary aide, I then went to work in London Weekend Television.

I went into current affairs television and became a producer on Weekend World, which was presented at the time by Brian Walden. But the moment I saw the opportunity to jump back into politics and to join Neil Kinnock's team, I did so. I was 30 years old. I'd been working as a volunteer in the Brecon and Radnor by-election.

Lord Speaker:

- I remember that

Lord Mandelson:

Neil was reorganising the Labour Party headquarters, creating a new directorate of campaigns and communications. And I asked whether I could apply. And he eventually said, "Yes, I'll support you." Roy Hattersley was his deputy, he also supported me. But it was quite controversial with the National Executive Committee with the entire NEC of course, who did the interview. And I was very clear what I stood for and what I believed in and how I saw the Labour Party, how I saw its future, how I saw its professionalisation, its modernisation. And of course, I backed Neil Kinnock, who was on a mission effectively to save the Labour Party.

If you remember the conditions -

Lord Speaker:

- I do

Lord Mandelson:

We were in the early 1980s, and I would just say this about Neil Kinnock, if he hadn't saved the Labour Party in the 1980s, there wouldn't have been much left for Tony Blair to modernise in the 1990s. So he took on the far left, he took on the Militant tendency and he turned around the Labour Party in the '80s. And we were in the 1987 general election, which was the first campaign I directed as Labour's campaign director. We reinstated ourselves as the alternative to the Conservatives, because of course by then the SDP had been created. They were pointing a dagger to our existence in the 1980s. But in that sense, but also in other ways, the 1987 general election was a very profound watershed for me.

Lord Speaker:

That's when I came in, '87, so I remember it vividly.

Lord Mandelson:

Is it? Well, the reason it was a watershed election for me was because I learned in that election the limitations of communications in politics. That of course if you have good policies, you don't throw them away on bad presentation - of course. And you had to embrace the media and make the media as it will work for you in communicating with the public. But that if you didn't have coherent policies and a philosophical outlook and a strong offer, unless your election campaign was anchored firmly in those policies, it wouldn't be successful. But personally, it was a watershed election for me.

It was quite a traumatic one, because in the first weekend of the election campaign, the News of the World chose to torpedo me and to try and torpedo the campaign by splashing on their front page, and then believe it or not, continuing the story on pages three and four, about me being a gay man. About being a gay person in politics whose partner, who I'd been together with for seven years, had fathered a child and that we were together helping to bring up this child. And it was a brutal thing on that first weekend of that election, and I remained fairly scarred by it.

It was very difficult in the 1980s. It made me, of course wonder whether I could ever be a Member of Parliament, this controversy that surrounded me, sparked by this News of the World story. But then do you remember Ted Leadbitter?

Lord Speaker:

I do, yes.

Lord Mandelson:

So Ted was, he'd been re-elected in '87 and it was going to be his last Parliament. And I thought, "God, can I have one shot, at least overcome all the difficulties and whatever." I can't say that Neil Kinnock was very pleased about that. He wanted me to remain in my job, but he said, "Look, kid, have a shot at it. I don't think that a constituency party like the one in Hartlepool is going to select somebody like you, but let's see, give it a shot and then when you come back, we'll open a bottle of Champagne."

Lord Speaker:

But you're assiduous in campaigning. I knew that.

Lord Mandelson:

Well, I was fairly assiduous. So I spent a year literally, John, knocking on every door of every party member and trade union delegate in Hartlepool. And I thought I was doing okay. I was what I was, I was a southern, gay, Oxford educated smoothie from London. I was not a Hartlepool type to put it mildly, but I was doing well. And then 24 hours before the selection, my leading opponent in the selection went back to the News of the World story, photocopied the whole story, put it anonymously in brown paper envelopes and put it through the door of every single party member in Hartlepool and trade union delegate to kibosh me. And that's when I discovered the innate decency of human beings, people in the Labour Party. They recoiled at this. It was such a horrible thing to do. And they gave me 60% backing on the first ballot and I was home and dry. And that's how I became selected in Hartlepool.

Lord Speaker:

When I speak to university students or young people and they ask me what makes a politician? I say, "Politicians have got to be resilient." So I think you have underlined that and you've got a gold medal for that.

Lord Mandelson:

Now gold medal for resilience, that's true. Famously a fighter, not a quitter. As I said later on, when I continued to be dogged by controversy in my political life, it didn't end there.

Lord Speaker:

[Laughter] Good. Now, take me back to the 1945-51 government when you mentioned your grandfather, because my memory of the history is that when the NHS came in, there was a view that it would be a regional NHS. There was a real political drive to say, "No, this is a National Health Service." Was that in the DNA of politicians like your grandfather?

Lord Mandelson:

You have to understand the difference between my grandfather who was essentially a municipal socialist - he was a local government man - and Ernie Bevin, who was a completely trade union man, and by the way-

Lord Speaker:

Foreign Secretary.

Lord Mandelson:

... my grandfather fell out with Ernie Bevin over the nationalisation, Morrisonian nationalisation after the war, because only Bevin thought, "Well, all you need to do is take state ownership of it, put the trade union representatives on the board, and they can run it along with the managers." And my grandfather said, "No, that's not how we're going to do it. These nationalised industries have got to be run arm’s length from the government in the national interest, and they have to serve the public, the consumers. And so we're going to appoint people to run those nationalised industries who don't simply represent the workforce. They represent the public at large, albeit with trade union representatives." So he seriously fell out with Ernie Bevin over nationalisation. And then he fell out with Nye Bevan over the NHS. Why? Because my grandfather believed that healthcare was the flip side of social care. That you couldn't really divide these two essential public services.

Lord Speaker:

A contemporary debate today.

Lord Mandelson:

A very contemporary debate today. And he said that the only part of government that can effectively deliver both sides of that coin joined together will be local authorities. I mean, large local authorities who would know their area, know their services, know their people. Nye took a different view. He said, "Look, this has got to be an absolutely centrally run national service." And as he said, as Minister of Health sitting in Whitehall, "I want to hear when a bedpan crashes to the floor in Tredegar, and I'll be controlling our response to that bedpan." And my grandfather said, "This is ridiculous. You can't build a care, a health, and a social care service just run from Whitehall." So they fell out over it a bit, had a good debate. Nye won, Nye won the argument and it became a centralised, centrally run national service. Now, there were good arguments for that, John, I'm not disputing that.

Lord Speaker:

Yeah, of course. Of course.

Lord Mandelson:

And to set it up from scratch, you probably did need to set it up as a national service. But of course, fast-forward all these years, we're now having a debate about decentralising public services and the way that they are run and delivered - tailored more to individual need and closer to the people in the communities they serve. But of course, particularly as you say, the social care/healthcare argument, so it's come full circle. But my grandfather, he had strong views. They all had strong views in that government. I mean, Attlee was the inimitable chairman of the board. His job was to make sure that this Morrison and that Bevin and that Bevan and this Hugh Dalton and that Stafford Cripps and this John Strachey, that they could all come together amid their disagreements and yet function as a single cabinet, as a team. And by and large they did.

Lord Speaker:

Yeah. Let me take you back to when you left local government, then you went to Weekend World and I think you worked with John Birt, who's a good friend, who's in here as well. And then you went into politics again, as you say, director of communications. What did you learn from being a TV producer and your engagement with industry that assisted you in politics? Because you went to Department of Trade and we'll maybe come on to this later, but you were very keen in establishing an industrial strategy. So you tackled that with vigour, but you must have had views on that before you went back to politics maybe as a result of your Weekend World.

Lord Mandelson:

Weekend World, and I smile when you say John Birt, because John is a very clear, coherent, always sort of surgical person in the way that he would say, "Look, our job is to explain." And this was a very cerebral programme. I mean, Neil said, "Oh, we've got to have this guy Peter Mandelson become our communications director, because he knows all about television," as if I was some producer from Hi-de-Hi! or Blind Date or whatever. No, this was a very cerebral current affairs programme. But here's the point, John. What it taught me was that if you're clear enough in your own head, you can explain things to the public and bring the public with you as it were on a journey. And that you need to, in order to engage the public, present clear difficult choices to the politicians that you interview so that the public has got an idea, an insight about what it's like, what goes on in a minister's mind or a Prime Minister's mind when they are choosing between probably imperfect and unpalatable choices.

I mean, very rarely do we have a choice between what's available and perfection. It is a choice between what's available here and what is far from perfect over here, and there's a trade-off in each option, in each way that you might choose. And politics is a messy, complicated business. As I say, nothing is ideal and what government is about, and this is why I loved government, I loved it when I stepped away from the campaign machine, and the back room, and the whole Prince of Darkness thing. I loved being a minister, because having those rigorous debates with your colleagues, with your civil servants, knowing that at the end of the day you're going to have to make up your mind, take a decision, make a clear recommendation, and then when it's adopted, go and sell it to the public. Then bring the public along with you so that they know about some of the difficult trade-offs and invidious choices that you've made in arriving at this particular policy conclusion.

And what Weekend World did in a very real sense was prepare me, to train me to analyse policies in that way and to put those difficult choices and trade-offs to the ministers we interviewed in the studios afterwards, because we all wrote these interview plans, structures – ‘if he says this, bash him with that. If he goes that way, confront him with that choice.’ And it was a very good training for me. I enjoyed it, but I infinitely preferred being on the other side of the table: being interviewed rather than writing the scripts for the interviewer.

Lord Speaker:

What stopped me at the time of Weekend World, I think it was a Sunday programme, but it was an hour long.

Lord Mandelson:

It was an hour. I know.

Lord Speaker:

Exactly. And we don't have that nowadays. We've got a couch with three or four people on, they get a couple of minutes. So there's no explanation.

Lord Mandelson:

It's nanosecond stuff. No, no. This is what John Birt designed. I mean, this was an hour's worth. I mean, half of it would be analysis and explaining and half of it interviewing the minister or whoever it was. It was tough stuff. But it attracted viewers.

Lord Speaker:

Oh, very much. Brian Walden was forensic.

Lord Mandelson:

And we miss it. Well, he had these forensic people working for him.

Lord Speaker:

Exactly. You were doing the business. I forgot about that. Good. Communications is different nowadays, particularly with social media. And there's positive-

Lord Mandelson:

All done in a second.

Lord Speaker:

Exactly. Positive aspects to social media, but there's a toxicity to it as well.

Lord Mandelson:

That's quite different now.

Lord Speaker:

Yeah. Do you have any advice for people in this environment?

Lord Mandelson:

Yes. I mean, look, in a sense, the News of the World was pretty toxic to me, but it was like an Exocet. Now, this is a constantly flowing river of poison, of polarisation, of people being mean to and about everyone else. And my advice to politicians now is get off it. I'm not on Twitter. I've oftentimes asked, said to my office-

Lord Speaker:

Yeah, I looked you up on the weekend by the way and you weren't there.

Lord Mandelson:

... "Why can't I be on Twitter? Everyone else is on Twitter." They said, "No, no, no, no. It's a really bad idea if you're on Twitter. Not only you'll say things you regret and you'll then be cancelled or whatever, but you'll hate the things that people say about you and you'll be engulfed in this sort of stuff." And so I'm not on Twitter, and I would say to my colleagues in politics, get out of the Twitter sphere. It's not the real public, it's not the real world. It's like a little microcosm of hateful people talking to each other and scoring points both off each other and everyone else. They just delight in targets. You have to have a target the whole time. Get off it, go out on the doorstep, talk to the public.

Lord Speaker:

So there are more positive ways of communicating?

Lord Mandelson:

Much more positive ways of communicating. Just remember when you're on the twittersphere, you're communicating within a bubble. You're not talking to the general public. And time and time again, you have politicians, my friends who are now on the frontbench in the Labour Party saying, "Oh look, this is really taking off on Twitter." And I said, "Well, let it take off on Twitter, because it's not the general public." "I know, it's going viral." I said, "Yes, but it's going viral in a bubble."

Lord Speaker:

In terms of what's happening nowadays in the political environment, you've got deepfake. And I think there was a video of Joe Biden asking people and Democrats not to vote in the primary as a result of that.

Lord Mandelson:

This is the big new challenge with artificial intelligence.

Lord Speaker:

Exactly. And the oversight board for Meta said that they don't want it removed, but they want it labelled. Now we have a number of distinguished peers and baronesses here working on the online bill, for example, Baroness Kidron, Baroness Morgan, and others in that. I suppose that you'll encourage them in that, but how far should we go in that area?

Lord Mandelson:

Well, I think that Baroness Kidron and Baroness Morgan are two very good examples of two fantastically publicly-motivated members of this House who probably would not be able to do this and raise these arguments and present these flags if there wasn't a House of Lords, by the way. Perhaps come back to that in a moment. But the House of Lords has also had, their Communications Committee has produced a very, very good report recently on AI.

Lord Speaker:

Baroness Stowell

Lord Mandelson:

And what I liked about Tina Stowell's committee's report was this, perfectly realistic about AI. Warning of possible courses it might take or eventualities and flagging up some of the risks associated with large learning machines. But they're not saying, "Oh my God, let's all crowd in and smother this at birth." They're not saying, "Oh, this could have such terrible, profound existential dangers. We've got to almost regulate it to death before it even gets off the ground." There may be a need for some sort of basic backstop legislation, I don't know. But my inclination would be to say, look at the opportunities that AI offers us, both in raising productivity and efficiency in the private sector, but also potentially transforming the delivery, the design and delivery of public services as well. Making them much more personally tailored and relevant to people. AI has the potential to transform diagnosis and preventative medicine in the National Health Service. So just be careful what you wish for when you move too quickly towards regulation, you don't want to smother it at birth.

Lord Speaker:

Yep. I'm reminded of Northern Ireland when you were Secretary of State, and I think we overlapped for a time on that. But when people asked me about that, I said, "It's a very different type of politics. It's all about personal relationships and bringing people together, and it's foreign to the department element there." But you were engaged in that. And I was involved in Omagh in the first weekend in that, and I kept up a continuation for that, because I was charged with the post-Omagh.

Lord Mandelson:

I'm so glad you have.

Lord Speaker:

Yeah, but I remember people like Michael Gallagher was there and his son Aiden, a car mechanic, 16 years of age. And Michael Gallagher, he's the best of humanity, and he's kept that going. And you have been and still are very close to him on that.

Lord Mandelson:

I had a problem. That was in the summer of 1998.

Lord Speaker:

'98.

Lord Mandelson:

I came in the following year, 1999. And the problem was it wasn't that my department, the Northern Ireland office, was insensitive or indifferent to what had happened. It was a terrible, terrible calamity for those families and all those who were affected.

Lord Speaker:

Yeah, 29.

Lord Mandelson:

You've mentioned Michael and his son Aiden. Heavens, there were so many others. And I said, "Look, this has got to be a priority. We've got to get to the bottom of this. We've got to find out who was responsible. We've got to bring them to trial." And they said "Secretary of State, you've got to leave this to the police. This is not a matter for you." And I said, "Well, the families are really agitated about it and they feel that we could and should be doing more, and I want to go to Omagh." "No, no, it's better if you don't go to Omagh." I said, "Well, why not?" They said, "Because you will stir up emotions. You will create expectations. You might lead people to believe that what we're doing might deliver some sort of justice earlier than frankly we're going to be able to do." I said, "No, I'm very sorry, but I'm going," and I went.

And it was a terrible, I mean, it was so emotional. It was emotionally draining, and I never let go of Omagh from that moment onwards. Months went by and I kept saying to the security director and the NIO, I said, "Tell me, give me an update on how the Omagh investigation is going." And I could feel him, he's a great guy, but I could just feel him slightly bristling. I said, "Well, I want to talk to the chief constable, Ronnie Flanagan." "No, Secretary of State, that is really not your job to talk to the chief constable." I said, "Well, I want to."

I talked to the chief constable and I just didn't feel that anyone was properly explaining to me why we had so much intelligence, John. To me it was a matter of joining the dots. And I said to Ronnie, "I'm really not happy with this." And he said, "Look, Secretary of State, it's our job, not yours. But as an exception, if you want to meet the investigating team, I will allow you to do so." I went to their offices, went to where they were conducting the investigation, sat down and talked to the three or four leading members of the investigation. I felt it was all I could do was to just demonstrate my political ministerial interest and commitment. And it has been a long journey of delivering justice over Omagh. Not entirely perfectly or satisfactorily, I have to say. But I still engage. I cannot leave from me and from my mind that initial experience I had.

Lord Speaker:

Yeah, I was down in Omagh, in fact, an hour after the bomb went off and it left me with-

Lord Mandelson:

Were you the security minister in the Northern Ireland office?

Lord Speaker:

Yes, at the time. I was the only minister on duty.

Lord Mandelson:

Yes, you were minister on duty. It was a weekend.

Lord Speaker:

On the Sunday I went down with John Prescott to visit, and then Tony Blair came across, he was on holiday in France and I phoned him. He came across and Bertie Ahern came up and there were intense talks taking place on that Sunday and all the participants came. But to talk about the separation of powers, on the Sunday, my office said to me that Willie Thompson, Ulster Unionist MP who represented Omagh, he had requested to come down to Omagh with me, but they said it was not appropriate. And I said to him, "Look, get him down. He's the MP for the area. It's very important, because there's a message here and the message is that this is an all-party issue. And as well as that, this is an atrocity on the whole of Northern Ireland, not just a section of Northern Ireland." So the mindset was a bit different from the political mindset, the administrative mindset.

Lord Mandelson:

Well, it was complicated, but I felt just as you felt that weekend and afterwards, I felt I had a duty to represent those families and their interests, and that's what I did.

Lord Speaker:

But as well as that, you saw the Assembly restored, you saw the police service reformed, and that wasn't easy at all. Can you give us an insight into that because-

Lord Mandelson:

No, what happened was Chris Patten, another member of this House, had done a really first-rate job in reviewing the entire Royal Ulster Constabulary. And radical change, radical replacement of the RUC by a new Police Service of Northern Ireland. I was completely committed to it and its implementation, and I did carry out that implementation. I introduced the legislation, we did it all. There were two things I was worried about. Chris wasn't really happy with me at the time about this. One was that I was just slightly worried that the supervisory boards that we were creating, the overseeing boards politically representative of all the parties, every section of the community across Northern Ireland, that they may not realise the need and the propriety of standing back away from any operational activity or decision of the police. I was worried about frankly, political interference by elements who frankly were connected with criminality. And so I just tweaked that a bit. Chris, not happy.

The other thing he thought was a bit excessive, I think. I wanted to save the face of the RUC. I didn't want to humiliate the RUC. They had made such sacrifices. They had lost so many of their members to the terrorism of the Provisional IRA. I had met families and widows and I wanted in saying goodbye to the RUC and finally standing them down and replacing them, I wanted to say a thank you. So I asked Her Majesty the Queen whether she would agree to awarding of the George Cross to the RUC as an acknowledgement and recognition of their sacrifice they had made. And in many, many cases, their bravery in the face of that terrorism. I knew all the political reasons why they had to go, and the Queen agreed, and we had a ceremony and I thought that was a nice way to stand down the RUC. But some disagreed. They said, "Come on, the RUC should just be swept away." And I said, "Come on, we can do this in a nicer way."

Lord Speaker:

Yeah, but it was a fantastic achievement when you consider it was, again, two different mindsets, two different political beliefs and bringing them together.

Lord Mandelson:

But look what we've got now. Now you've got a Sinn Féin First Minister in tandem, in lockstep-

Lord Speaker:

With DUP.

Lord Mandelson:

... with the DUP. And everything they decide they have to decide together. Each has a veto. I mean, it's an amazing achievement, it is one of the signal greatest achievements of British politics, certainly of New Labour...

Lord Speaker:

Are you positive for the future?

Lord Mandelson:

I'm very positive about the future, because they keep on encountering these potholes and hurdles in the road and they'll go over them. They'll go around them. It will last, because that's the will of the people of Northern Ireland. They want it to work.

Lord Speaker:

In one of your government appointments, you were Secretary of State for trade, and as I mentioned earlier, your view in industrial strategy and you seem to have a big global approach to these issues. Probably reinforced again by your role as Commissioner in Europe on that. And I think you mentioned Lee Kuan Yew was very influential-

Lord Mandelson:

In Singapore, yes.

Lord Speaker:

... in giving you that view. But you've said that the drift economically is from west to east. What advice do you have for the country at this time, particularly as we go forward economically? Because since the banking crisis, I think we've been quite sclerotic in terms of our GDP growth and economic growth. I think it's 0.4% per year.

Lord Mandelson:

We have not had a brilliant decade, that's for sure. Look, I tell you what my advice is, don't be defeatist. Don't be fatalistic. Of course the world is changing. Of course China and the Asian countries are fast emerging. There are other large, populated countries that have plenty of natural resources and critical materials that perhaps we lack. They're now creating and developing some fine universities. And by the way, the future of any economy, the future of our economy, our future prosperity as a country is going to be built on the broad strong shoulders of our great universities in Britain. So let's not be defeatist or fatalist about this just because we see others emerging. The global economy is not a zero-sum game. And if we invest and we raise levels of public and private investment, if we invest in our infrastructure again, if we invest in our skills, we invest in AI and the introduction of technology to some amazingly new fast emerging markets and industries, which didn't exist 10 or 20 years ago.

Now we can compete, John, in this country. Okay, we've had a terrible 10 years. We've had global financial crisis, we had austerity, we had Brexit, heaven help us, we've had Covid, and we've had all the divisions, political divisions of successive Conservative, Prime Ministers and ministers. But look, I think the country's ready to turn a page. They want to start a new chapter in our national story. And at the root of that has got to be our drawing and our strengths, leveraging our science base, mobilising our great universities. But making sure that whilst we have some of the best entrepreneurs and private investors in Europe and the world, they need a government that's backing them and doing some of the heavy lifting, some of the pump priming. That's what I discovered. The essential partnership between public and private, between business and government. We're operating sensibly, going with the grain of markets, but a government doing what sometimes only a government can and should do. And that's what we've got to do again.

Lord Speaker:

Would you recommend keeping a link with China?

Lord Mandelson:

We have no alternative but to keep a link.

Lord Speaker:

There's some saying we should-

Lord Mandelson:

Oh, I know, but I mean it's barking. Look, I don't like China's political system. I don't like their complete disregard for conscience in a broader sense of the term in which they conduct themselves both at home and internationally. I think Xi Jinping, by the way, in the way in which he's taking the country and operating a very centralised system, rather authoritarian system, is doing China colossal damage, potentially, economically. So there are many things I could say about China, but also we are in one global boat, John.

Lord Speaker:

And globalisation is not bust as some pessimists would say.

Lord Mandelson:

Globalisation is changing. It's not stopping and it's not reversing, but it is changing. Structurally our economies, the structure of international trade, the structure of many supply chains are changing and we've got to adapt to those changes. But at the end of the day, we are in one giant global economic boat and we've got to row together and make sure that we move forward at pace, but in a way that doesn't simply benefit and bring rewards to those who are the most advanced. But those others in the world who want to catch up, they want their opportunity to do what we've done. To trade, to generate economic growth and prosperity, to lift people out of poverty. The last thing we should be doing now, and all these people who say, "Oh, we don't like trade or we don't like globalisation." What they're saying is, what you want to do is kick away the ladder that we've climbed up in our economic growth so that others, developing countries, are not able to follow us. Well, I don't agree with that.

Lord Speaker:

You have said that generally speaking, politicians are not good at strategy. They're good at tactics on that.

Lord Mandelson:

Did I say that?

Lord Speaker:

You did somewhere. I'll tell you afterwards where you said it. [Laughter] But in terms of that strategy, the need for long term thinking is important. What's been your approach to strategy as opposed to tactics?

Lord Mandelson:

Values are your starting point. Your public policy goals are what the country needs and what the public wants. The policies are your means of pursuing those goals. But if you're constantly thinking in a completely transactional short term, here today, gone tomorrow way, you're not going to be able to drive that great ship of state in pursuit of those big goals and pursue consistently, consistently the policies you need to underpin them.

Our great, the bane of British economic life and history is this constant muddling through the whole time, chopping and changing. If not just from almost one Prime Minister to the next or one government to the next, it's one minister to the next. When you've had as we've had in this country, seven Business Secretaries in as many years, seven Digital Secretaries in as many years, every single year, your priority or your emphasis or what a particular minister wants to do in their portfolio changes. No consistency. That's not what other countries do. And they're more successful than us in developing, pursuing and implementing policies over the longterm. And that is going to be the driver and the measure of success of the next government of our country. Big goals, big missions, clear policies consistently pursued over a long period. That's the only way we're going to be able to get up out of the economic mire that we're in at the moment.

Lord Speaker:

And as an experienced communicator, with the strategy it's important that alongside that is a story about the future and providing what-

Lord Mandelson:

You're explaining to people what you're doing, why you're doing it, where you're going, and you're asking them to come on that journey with you. And there will be pitfalls and elephant traps and setbacks, and you've got to explain those as well. And if you do, people will understand. People prefer honesty now. We've had a really difficult time. The other day, the other week rather, Labour adjusted its borrowing policies to do with investing in renewables. And people said to me, "Oh God, this is going to be a disaster, another U-turn, the public's going to think we're not competent." I said, "Well, actually the public like a bit of honesty. They'd rather be told now what has to change and what has to be adjusted in accordance with economic realities than have that hidden from them and then discover further down the course." A little bit of honesty with the public goes a long way in my view.

Lord Speaker:

Let's go on to the House of Lords. You've been a member of the House of Lords since 2008. In fact, you have been a minister in both Houses. How do they compare with each other?

Lord Mandelson:

Well, they're completely different. I mean, the-

Lord Speaker:

What about scrutiny?

Lord Mandelson:

The House of Commons is a sort of bull pit. It can also be a pulpit as well as a bear pit. It's the adversarial end of our parliamentary system. And quite honestly, a lot of detail goes by the board. A lot of scrutiny goes by the board. A lot of clear, honest debate goes by the board, because people are so busy taking chunks out of each other. That's fine. That's the adversarial bit of politics. Our end of the parliamentary system is different. It's about scrutiny, it's about debate, it's about revising, it's about advising. It's about saying, "Look, we have people here who know an enormous amount on the subject matter of these bills, of this legislation. They're able to bring this experience and this knowledge in an informed way. Listen to what we're saying."

And what strikes me about the House of Lords now is the colossal number of amendments that the government actually accepts and sometimes initiates in the House of Lords, because they know they're going to be properly debated and scrutinised here rather than in the House of Commons where you've had debates guillotined and short-circuited. You've had a headlong rush to pump the bills through like a sausage making machine until they come to this end when there's a more reflective approach.

And what worries me, John, about the ideas, the proposals of my own party to sweep away the House of Lords, is that what they're proposing to do, what they're envisaging. If you take their proposals, or the report of Gordon that was done for the Labour Party, they no longer want to see a House, a second chamber having that role. I mean, as far as I can see, I've read the proposals very carefully. I can't see anyone focusing on what is the essential role of a second chamber, which is to revise, advise, and reform what the legislation that comes from the primary, elected chamber. Instead, what's being proposed is something completely different, is to abolish the House of Lords, put in its place a second chamber of the nations and regions of the UK in order to entrench the constitutional status of self-governing nations and regions of the UK.

Now, there's an argument to be had about further devolution. There's an argument to be had about how much more you might want to invest in Scottish and Welsh devolution. There's an argument to be had indeed about devolving, decentralising government in England as well. But the idea that we should almost entirely rewrite our country's constitution and indeed write it down for the first time, and to enshrine in this constitution a whole new concept of self-government of nations and of regions of England, which as far as I can see don't yet exist; that the job of the second chamber is not only to entrench that self-governing status, but also to ward off from the House of Commons policies and legislation that might question or impair that self-governing status of nations and regions; and that you are simply creating a second chamber to give a voice for those self-governing nations...

Well, we haven't even got to the stage in this country of agreeing that we want self-governing nations and regions, let alone doing away with the entire role and purpose of the House of Lords in order to create a second chamber that would entrench those rights. And I think that we've got to have a far deeper conversation and analysis about this than has taken place to date. Well, we haven't had a substantive discussion about it in our own party, let alone a debate in the country. And yet we're told six months away from a general election, all this is going to happen, abracadabra, in the first term of a Labour government. Well, I mean there are real issues of principle. There's a real question mark over the continuing, necessary role of the House of Lords. There are other questions, by the way, about reforming the House of Lords.

Its numbers, its members, how they're appointed. The hereditaries and the by-elections, et cetera, all of which I'm absolutely up for. Let's have that serious discussion about how the House of Lords has got to be changed. But that's quite separate from a completely different set of proposals to do away with the whole thing. And I'm afraid that, having looked at the proposals very carefully, I mean, what I see is a sort of multi-layered cake with an assortment of very diverse ingredients in it with a thin layer of icing at the top, which is called a new second chamber of the regions and nations, which has barely been put in the oven yet, let alone fully baked.

Lord Speaker:

And in the speeches I've made on it, I stressed the fact that our role is complementary to the House of Commons. We don't make legislation, but we scrutinise. And I think you mentioned about the number of amendments. If I remember the Levelling Up Bill, which has come to us, on day 10 of the Levelling Up Bill, the number of amendments were greater than on day one. So I think that tells you about the depth of scrutiny. And what I've said to people is, we're getting quite animated about this, "If we're going to do something about this, then the strap line has to be "seek to understand."'

Lord Mandelson:

Look, the House of Commons needs a House of Lords. It can't do all the work, all the amendments and all the revising and all the scrutinising and all the reviewing that a second chamber can do. They're too busy operating the sausage machine. I mean, they're too busy… questions and gladiatorial contests and all the theatre of the House of Commons and whatever. Look, the House of Commons is the essential fulcrum. It is the pivot of our parliamentary system. And we in the House of Lords have to respect that by the way. They're elected. We're not.

Lord Speaker:

Yeah, absolutely.

Lord Mandelson:

We respect that. We don't pull the rug from underneath legislation that has been endorsed by a majority in the House of Commons. But what we can do and what the House of Commons expects us to do is take a second and a third look and help them improve the legislation. And that's our job. And yet that precise thing is being proposed to be swept away, put in the dustbin in order to create a completely different chamber to entrench self-government or whatever. This hasn't been thought through. I'm sorry.

Lord Speaker:

No, you've made that very clear on that. Is there anything else you'd like to say before we wrap up this chat?

Lord Mandelson:

No, except that it's been a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you very much for the opportunity and you've taken me down memory lane. But what I really want to do now is to live the next period of my life in a slightly more, I don't know. I don't know what I'm going to do in the next period of my life, but I enjoy being a member of the House of Lords. And I hope that whatever I do next, I'm looking forward to creating a third career. I've done politics-

Lord Speaker:

A third man creating a third career.

Lord Mandelson:

Third man creating a third career. I've done politics. I've created an advisory business, Global Counsel, done that for 13 years now. Perhaps time for something else, a third career. I don't know what it's going to be, but I hope it'll enable me to be a more active member of this House.

Lord Speaker:

Yes, resilience. Lord Mandelson, Peter, it's been a real pleasure for me to interview you. And if I look at the clock, I think we've outdone Weekend World in the time that we're conversing.

Lord Mandelson:

Well, I hope we haven't lost our viewers.

Lord Speaker:

Absolutely. But listen, thanks very much. I'm really grateful for you coming along. Thank you.

Lord Mandelson:

Pleasure. Thank you.