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As Lord Mandelson packed away his holiday clothes and prepared to head for the airport he could afford to allow himself a gratified smile.
His political transformation is now all but complete. Gordon Brown once looked crushed when he was told he had “gone from Stalin to Mr Bean”.
Peter Mandelson has gone the other way: from Rasputin to Labour's 007. On his final evening he leans on the railings of the luxury yacht as it bobs about in a Greek harbour, sips a cold Martini and glances down at the newspaper. Back at home they are talking of him as a potential Prime Minister. He arches an eyebrow, casts a final look at the bronzed beauty beside him and thinks “Never Say Never Again.”
Yet as he arrives back in London today, Mandelson's holiday dreams are likely to fade faster than his tan. His unique mixture of suave charm and icy menace may have helped him escape political death on more than one occasion but he is now at the peak of his powers. “PM” is never going to become PM — and in his heart he must know it.
He shouldn't be denied his moment of self-satisfaction. For a decade the media have attacked him for a multitude of sins, some real, many imagined. He has been written off more often than anyone can remember. For the first time, there are now journalists and commentators who rate his prospects of success more highly than he does himself. But Mandelson is no fool.
He has been around long enough to recognise the mood of unreality that so often engulfs Westminster at this time of year. This week he is at the peak of his power. Not merely First Secretary but deputy prime minister in all but name and now acting Prime Minister too. He would have achieved none of those things had he not tied his fortunes so completely to Gordon Brown.
In reality, Brown is still in charge in Scotland, where he often is at weekends anyway. Mandelson was no more running Britain from his Blackberry in Corfu than Harriet Harman was with last week's self-aggrandising meetings at Number 10. The Downing Street officials who keep the country ticking over in August regard the “who's really in charge?” brouhaha with amusement not concern.
They are happy for Ms Harman to knock off early most afternoons and for Lord Mandelson to stay on the yacht for that extra day. It keeps them out of their hair. If there is an important decision to be made it is to Mr Brown that they will turn every time.
Mr Brown's leadership is more secure today than at any time since the botched election-that-never-was of 2007. If the man best placed to take over from him really is Lord Mandelson then the prime minister can sleep easy at night.
To be in the running Mandelson would have to relinquish his peerage. That would provoke a leadership crisis and Mandelson would be in no position to take advantage of it. He would still need a safe seat that could be won with certainty at a by-election. No Labour seat is safe enough for that, least of all if the sitting MP were to make way for him. Voters hate being asked to go to the polls just for the convenience of politicians. And the chances of potential rivals in the Commons sitting on their hands while he tried to get back in are close zero.
Everyone is entitled to their dreams. But Mandelson's Lazarus-like resurrection, when Brown invited him back into the Cabinet last October, was enough of a dream come true. It is fanciful to believe he can go any higher.
Might he then become leader of the Labour party after the election, when the job is unlikely to include the added bonus of being PM? Again the answer is no. Even if he wanted to, and that seems unlikely, he would still need to find a seat, win it, and take on all challengers in a leadership election. Mr Blair's wish that one day the party would come to love Peter Mandelson has not come true.
They may have come to respect him, even to be grateful to him for steadying the ship before it went down, but Labour members, whether in Parliament, the constituencies or the unions, are not about to put him in charge.
For the first time in his political career, Mandelson's better qualities are in evidence: his steadiness in a crisis, his ability to communicate a sense of purpose, his humour and refusal to despair. Thanks to the media that once reviled him, he now appears positively avuncular. But he knows that if he were ever to put himself in contention for the leadership they would turn on him again.
Everything that could be trawled up to discredit him would be. His history of spin, the deceptions and bad judgment that led to him having to resign twice from Mr Blair's Cabinet and, yes, his sexuality. The Right-wing tabloids may have given up the worst excesses of gay-baiting but they would find plenty of ways to suggest Britain wasn't ready for a homosexual prime minister.
As the party conferences approach there will be no shortage of leadership speculation. If Labour's poll ratings don't improve dramatically the question will be asked once more: could anyone do better? But the chance to replace Mr Brown has passed. It won't come again. Mr Mandelson may feel flattered that he's spoken of as a potential Prime Minister but he should be realistic enough to know that it isn't going to happen.
Lance Price is a former Labour Party director of communications. His next book, Where Power Lies, a history of Downing Street's battles with the media, is published next year.
Reader views (9)
As has already been said Mandelson has never been elected by the British people, neither has Ken Clarke nor, for that matter, was Digby Jones (now left). This is democracy?? As someone said we are now living in a DICTATORSHIP and ruled by the Polit-bureau (EU). God help old England.
- Vanessa, London
'The point about Mandelson and an increasing number of gov't ministers is that they have never been elected by anybody. Isn't this what we used to call dictatorship'
Which Gov't ministers? We do not vote in Prime Ministers or any other cabinet minister for that matter they are elected by the party we vote into power...
That said Mandelson is a rather odious example of all that is rotten in politics in this country twice out of office for alleged misdemeanors and welcomed back with open arms by a man desperate to save his own skin.
I don't like to wish my life away but I cant wait for the next election to kick these Nu Labour idiots into touch...The whole Nu Labour story was a scam which died when Tony Blair finally left! A man who I despise with more venom than Mandelson, Prescott, Blears et al.
- David B, Winchester
The point about Mandelson and an increasing number of gov't ministers is that they have never been elected by anybody. Isn't this what we used to call dictatorship.?
- Allan Koss, York UK
Mandelson, like Tony Blair was never a 'Socialist' in the old Labour Party sense. He was and is still a 'Closet Tory', a 'Phony Socialist'.
A friend of Rich Geezers. Like Blair before him, he is a second rate 'Actor' trying to fulfill the best acting role he can. He is now a Peer of the Realm, and his ego has been inflated so much now, that he, like Blair believes that he 'Deserves Everything he Has!'
He is much more politcally canny than Gordon McRuin ever will be. So one still wonders why McRuin has allowed Lord Meddlesome all this 'power & influence' in his current role as Business Secretary.
Unless Mr Meddlesome has 'something on' Pa Brone??
- Uncle Vanya, East Anglia area UK
Mandelson encapsulates everything that is bad about Nu-Labour. He is unprincipalled, will not take responsibility for anything and out for himself rather than serving the electorate. I would love to know on what basis he was awarded a peerage. I can;t wait until they're all looking for new jobs.
- Mark, London
The prospect of Mandelson ever becoming PM are too awful to contemplate.
My hope is that he is standing close to Brown next year when the pair of them are catapulted into the political wilderness never to be seen or heard of again.
- Scotty, Cambridge UK
I absolutely agree with Lance Price's proposition that serpentine to the coil Mandelson will never get the keys to Number Ten Downing Street. In fact, I'd go further and predict that a bright twenty-year-old, currently at Oxbridge, will be the next Labour PM around twenty years from now.
- Ted, London
Lance makes more sense than Decca Aitkenhead does in her forthy "celebrity" interview with Mandy in today's Guardian.
- Susie, London, UK
He won't get tehy keys as he went to Europe for 5 years,adn the second time he resigned he didn't do anything wrong-Plus he's in the Lords.
Peter Mandleson reminds me of Mrs Thastcher-he has a clear outline of where the country needs to go he can relate to middle englad and like Thatcher he's doesn't always get his reasons across, he's not a master on subjects but knows enough to know why things need to change-I wouldn't be suprised if it was Mandleson who was really telling Blair the way the Country should proceed and Blair was just acting out the authoirty figure- I things had been different he would have mad a better PM than either, Blair or Brown- history will show he has stil much to offer ,for those who want to listen
- John P Reid, london
