A conservative voter normally, I was suckered into voting Labour in 1997, and boy it didn't take long to see how I had been suckered - Ecclestone happened within months, so nothing new about "New" Labour after all !
However, this did make me wonder about just how the New Labour deception came about, and like a lot of others reviewers here, I would not trust Campbell to even know what "truth" meant, Blair is anything but a "pretty stright kind of guy" (especially with Cherie standing behind him with her hand out for more money) and Brown writing a book called "Courage" says it all about his self-delusionment.
This left Mandelson as the least bad of a shockingly mandacious bunch of amateur self glorifiers who could not contain their ambition and egos to join a party that more accurately reflected their believes, a sort of a wet kind of Toryism often masquarading as radicalism in some Liberal Democrat hearts. Thus it was that a handful of cuckoos occupied nests in a Socialist tree and attempted to rule a broadly centrist garden hoping that no-one would notice that the other birds in the tree were still truly Socialist (including GB).
So what did I find in this book ? It reads well, reads smoothly and provides a good background to PM's early years and introduction to politics. His early years in the labour party were interesting, and what really struck me about them was that PM's role was always about presentation; Practrically every role he had (bar his Nortern Ireland stint) was about ensuring that appearances were positive, regardless of the reality. So deep is spinning ingrained in his psyche, that even PM uses phrases such as "made to seem", "must ensure it didn't look as if" and so on. His whole career, including the last stint with GB was about "being Peter" - the foil for embarrassing or unhelpful facts.
His self-glorifying is deliberately muted, heroically (but noticeably) understated. But is a constant unmistakeable theme throughout the book. No matter how often he was betrayed, used, cast aside and wronged, he was always loyal; hurt but licked his wounds in private, always putting the labour party at the front, which seems to include his relationship with TB and GB. I suppose since these two were his ticket to political power and glory, that is not so surprising. However, I also do note that there are signs that PM is actually an intelligent and not particularly naive policy wonk. He could have done more to build on this strength, but clearly felt he lacked the grassroots support and social skills to put himself for consideration as a leader - he was too in-awe of the "pretty straight kinda guy".
I am no political anorak, but as I was reading through this book, I was struck by how many of the topics and events he discussed seem to be based on events that made the headlines. It was almost as if he trawled the headlines over the last decade to see which topics would resonate most with even the general reader, thereby maximising his potential market for this book. One major exception to this, which must have been deliberate, was any discussion of the broken promise on the referendum on the EU Constitution/Lisbon Treaty. It appears that although he totally supported the breaking of the promise, even his spinning skills were not up to putting that in a positive light. In fact, given the visceral hatred that is so apparent between GB/PM, it has to be feasible that PM's personal motiovation for coming back to GB's government was not to support GB and Labour, but to ensure that the labour government did not fall before the Lisbon Treaty could be ratified.
I still came away not really understanding how New Labour aspirations were any different from a centre-Tory/Lib-Dem agenda or policy levers. Up to 2008 it was almost impossible to tell what really differed New Labour from Tory policies. They may profess to hate Thatcher, but it is noticeable that her reforms provided New Labour with an attenuated Union movement which made industrial and domestic policy easier to manage, and a series of structural reforms which provided a golden era of economic growth and prosperity, much to GB's delight.
But I did come away knowing how I had been suckered in 1997; This leapord used 24-hour tattoo ink to con the British public.
It taught me to go with my philosophical instincts, for a leapord never changes it's spots.
Jack
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