Stephen Bayley recalls the moment he became involved in New Labour’s Millennium project, a venture overseen by the then Minister without Portfolio, Peter Mandelson

Because of my role in The Design Museum, someone coined the term “design guru” for me.  This I accepted with what I like to think of as ironic self-deprecation. Then one day, 1997, I guess, I was sitting in my Chelsea studio, feet on the table, staring at the river, when I got a call from a famous ad agency. The caller wanted to know if I knew about the Millennium Project. I said I knew what I’d read in the papers. He asked me if I’d like to be creative director. This was Friday afternoon and I told him I’d answer on Monday. I said “yes” and was immediately immersed in the worst imaginable muddle of politicised idiocy, bureaucratic brain-fog and patronising garbage. They paid me a lot of money, but it wasn’t enough to compensate for exposure to life-threatening crap. Peter Mandelson was the crap-master. Immediately, I wrote a little book to describe my exposure to the lunatic dealings of New Labour. I called it Labour Camp, a tasteless reference to Nazi-era horrors, but also a nod to Susan Sontag and an explicit reference to the horrible let’s-all-be-mates-under-canvas chumminess of the New Labour moment. Thirty years later, my deep, deep reservations – I’d even call it “repulsion” – about Mandy’s motivations and methods have been shared by everyone. This is what I wrote at the time.  I wouldn’t change a word of it.

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Extract from Labour Camp: The Failure of Style Over Substance by Stephen Bayley

“Political language … is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind” – George Orwell

Peter Mandelson is a spin doctor. But who is he and what is that?

Mandelson, according to Gore Vidal, has the ‘insolent manner of one born to the ruling class but three’. The great American essayist and novelist may have confused effect with cause. Mandelson is the chief spin doctor of New Labour, a man one journalist described as a ‘cold-eyed, rootless operator, a scheming corridor cowboy who has sold the soul of the Labour Party to get what he wants’.

When Mandelson arrived at the beginning of the New Labour project, the membership was what Barry Delaney, an advertising professional, describes as ‘dim, politically correct amateur Trots in fairisle sweaters’. Mandelson professionalized this shoddy team. He turned his Millbank HQ into a churning multitude of talented media folk, each one of whom was responsible to him. Mandelson understands the media, although the feeling always was that while at LWT his interest was not in acquiring even the most basic of the limited repertoire of technical skills necessary to television production, but in acquiring (in this most appropriate of circumstances) a network of his own. One can only guess about the amount of influence personal events have had in this obsessive process: young Mandelson learnt of his grandfather’s death from an ITN Newsflash, which may have caused a permanent and damaging short-circuit between image, emotion and control.

In an age of pseudo-events, he who controls the image has his fingers on the buttons of power. Mandelson’s fingers were everywhere. While the promotion of the 1987 election had been left to old Labour’s chosen agency, by 1997 Mandelson was completely in control. You can see how Gore Vidal might have been confused. Mandelson is manipulative and independent: it is often said that while there is a Mandelsonian style (furtive, sly, threatening, clever, smarmy), there are no Mandelsonites. It is not only the researchers and journalists who are ruthlessly orchestrated, it is politicians too. Mo Mowlam once remarked: ‘I really am pleased to be doing this for the BBC. Usually, Peter only lets me do Sky.’

But Mandelson’s star has risen only lately. Under John Smith he was regarded (by someone understandably reluctant to be identified) as a ‘lowly worm’. The distinguished journalist, Lucia van der Post, called him ‘icy, supercilious, dismissive, rude’. I repeated this comment to another distinguished journalist, who quickly retorted ‘No, that’s much too cosy a description’. For someone so sensitive about appearances, he seems bizarrely insensitive about his behaviour and judgments. While, perhaps, not a lady’s man in the old-fashioned sense, he routinely offends women dinner guests by his refusal to engage with anyone who does not offer a political advantage. But then, he accepts the gift-in-kind of a car loan from night-club owner Jamie Palumbo. Mandelson, the man from the Ministry of Soundbites, broke no rules by using transport provided by the proprietor of the Ministry of Sound,  although many thought it an odd error of judgement, as Palumbo has made more enemies than he has friends. To savour the oddity, you have to imagine, say, Michael Howard electioneering in a white stretch limo – complete with shag-pile seats, TV antenna, Jacuzzi and wet-bar – sponsored by Peter Stringfellow.

With his smugly declared preference for Classic FM in the car, Mandelson fell unknowingly into a trap laid by Reggie Nadelson, a New York journalist whose recent evolution into crime writer has made Mandelson a fan. Anyway, it was Reggie who defined a certain musical style as ‘classics for dummies’. Quite. Mandelson also enjoys the slightly smutty drawings of Chris Orr, drawn for Ministerial delight from the Government Art Collections. Adding to his belief that Mandelson has no aesthetic sense, Roy Hattersley said that he was ‘not much of a reader, in fact I don’t think he reads at all’.

John Smith himself had a shrewd appreciation of Mandelson’s manipulative qualities, saying he was so ‘devious he would one day disappear up his own something or other’. The myth is that Mandelson pulls the strings. There are people who think he may even write Blair’s speeches, although those in a position to know are sceptical. According to Nicholas Jones, Alistair Campbell, who knows about writing, said ‘Writing was never his strong point … he had to look to friends to help him out, know what I mean?’ But Mandelson’s authority depends on his having ‘the ear (and the mouth) of the Prime Minister’ as one of Blair’s media advisers told me. Maybe he has metaphorical possession of other body parts too. Above all, Mandelson can, to use the wonderful expression of Lester Bookbinder, ‘turn crap into mediocrity’.

William Rees-Mogg wrote a brilliant character sketch of Andrew Neil which strikes me as almost perfectly applicable to Mandelson. He said he was not perceptive but kindly (I’m not absolutely certain about this bit myself) but a bully, honest, but not scrupulous, a winner who sees himself as a loser, shrewd, but gullible (The Times, 2nd November 1986).

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