"The stultifying results… endemic official corruption…" (Charter 08):
The second time he was sacked was in circumstances that defy belief. Before it was even elected to government in 1997, The Labor Party had been involved with a family of millionaire Indian businessmen – the Hindujas – who were trying to obtain British citizenship. For its part, the Labor government was engaged in its principal activity, lobbying for money. The Hindujas had expressed themselves willing to provide a large sum of money to support one of Labor's pet projects that was at the time floundering from lack of finance, the catastrophic Millenium Dome.
Citizenship applications by the brothers had already been refused under the previous government because of serious concerns about the legality of their business practices in India. In spite of this, one of the brothers was granted citizenship within months of Labor's election, even though he had not even spent the requisite number of days in Britain. Senior Labor politicians, of whom Mr. Mandelson was the most active, immediately stepped up their intensive lobbying on behalf of the second brother, whose application was granted in a quarter of the usual time despite the fact that he too had failed to spend the requisite number of days in the country.
When the story became public and turned into a scandal, Mandelson went into lie-fest overdrive, producing a series of different accounts of events, none of which bore any resemblance to reality.
You can read the full jaw-dropping details in The Observer – The Guardian's stablemate – here and here. They would shame a banana republic. I was actually laughing out loud as I reread the story – I had forgotten quite what an appalling display of graft, lies, venality, and corruption the whole affair revealed. Involvement with the brothers went to the top of the Party and Tony Blair himself, but it was Mandelson's elbows that were in deepest, and eventually his was the token sacrifice.
His "punishment" was to be shipped off to the European Union in Brussels – a veritable haven of graft and corruption whose auditors have refused to approve its accounts for fifteen years – where he was able to earn hundreds of thousands of pounds as a Eurocrat and extend his network of wealthy friends.
"We reiterate and endorse basic universal values as follows… The holders of major official posts in government at all levels are determined through periodic competitive elections..." (Charter 08)
Mr. Mandelson's nickname – Prince of Darkness – lends an unwarranted sheen of glamour to his oily veneer. His expertise – double-dealing, backstabbing, boot-licking the rich and powerful, media manipulation, turf wars, status squabbles, veiled threats, self-promotion, more boot-licking to the rich and powerful – is of little relevance to Britain in these hours of difficulty.
But to a Labor Prime Minister desperate to hold on to power so that he can, er... hold on to power, Mandelson's skills were essential, and he simply had to be brought back.
The problem of Mr. Mandelson being utterly unelectable – there is not a constituency in the country that would touch him – was resolved very simply: he has been brought back by Mr. Brown and appointed to the House of Lords as the noble Lord Mandelson of Foy. Since this is not an elected post he cannot be unelected from it, and the British people are therefore stuck with him.
Since his return he has already been up to his old tricks, lying about his associations with a Russian millionaire (there's that word again), but as one of his political opponents was engaged in something similar, it seems that a truce was called and it was informally agreed to sweep the whole thing under the carpet.
