A Journalist's View

An excellent article by the journalist Jeff Randall in today's Daily Telegraph discusses Peter Mandelson's new book and the insights it gives us into the last two governments, in particular that of Gordon Brown.   It is obviously too long to quote in full, but the following paragraph expresses very clearly what the last 13 years did for this country.   He says that David Miliband ("with undiguised cheek") is urging us to "focus on the problems of the future" rather than dwell on the past, as is his brother.   "You can see why", says Randall, "For them and for us, recent history is a dreadful place to be".

"It is where a dysfunctional clique took the United Kingdom into an illegal war, dismantled border controls, encouraged unprecedented immigration, debased educational standards, attacked the independence of our best schools and universities, botched devolution, eroded British sovereignty, pumped up a consumer debt bubble, ran our private pension system into the ground, messed up financial regulation and wrecked the country's balance sheet".

It is hard to deny any of these accusations.   No wonder they want to "move on"!

Jeff Randall concludes that Peter Mandelson's autobiography, "a marvellous compendium of score-settling, poison and betrayal, will be an enduring reminder of the New Labour horror show.   Life without them in charge feels like coming up for air" - a very good description of what it does feel like.