People need to stop promoting ‘serial liar’ Blairites as a force for good

The Door to Hell with Blairites Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson


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Two ‘serial liar’ Blairites have been prominent on social media in recent days. And it’s supposedly left-wing people who’ve been promoting them. Let’s be clear: this really isn’t OK.

The Canary‘s editor-at-large Kerry-Anne Mendoza tweeted that:

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So, what’s the deal?

The return of the “Prince of Darkness”

First up and Peter Mandelson was in Hartlepool. He was campaigning for Paul Williams, Labour’s candidate in the by-election. It was “great to be back” according to Mandelson. Apparently, Labour is “under new management”. Williams declared on Twitter that:

Mandelson is well respected across Hartlepool as a hard working MP here for 12 years.

Anyone see the problem here? Well, this is of course the same Mandelson that, as Socialist Appeal wrote, was the “Prince of Darkness” that Labour:

parachuted into Hartlepool to serve as its MP in the 1990s.

It’s the same Mandelson that quit government twice due to scandals. This is also the same Mandelson that voted for the second invasion of Iraq. And it’s the same Mandelson that then quit as an MP to get a more lucrative role in the EU. And the same Mandelson who then quit that job to return to government. Also, as one person pointed out on Twitter:

And as someone else noted:

Oh, and it’s the same Mandelson that’s also chairman of a global lobbying firm.

It’s perhaps a measure of both Williams and the Labour leadership that an endorsement from one of the most controversial figures in UK politics of recent decades is somehow a good thing. But, Blairites attempting to bring their careers back from the dead, and people welcoming these political zombies back, is a running theme at present.

Labour’s very own Dominic Cummings

Enter Blairite number two: Labour’s very own Dominic Cummings, Alastair Campbell. He’s been all over Twitter in recent days. This is because of campaigning lawyer Peter Stefanovic, whose video about Boris Johnson’s “relentless lying” went viral:

All power to Stefanovic. He’s been persistent in trying to get the corporate press to report on Johnson’s lying. This led to Campbell on BBC News jumping on Stefanovic’s bandwagon when he mentioned the video during an interview:

So, people have been praising Campbell for raising the video:

Anyone see the problem this time? Well, this is of course the same Campbell that helped create ‘New Labour’. As the website politics.co.uk noted:

Campbell was said to have coined the name ‘New Labour’; drafted the speech that led to the symbolic rewriting of Clause IV in the Labour Party constitution; and worked to court Rupert Murdoch and persuade the Sun newspaper to support Labour in the 1997 General Election.

It’s also the same Campbell who was involved in Blair’s ‘dodgy dossier’ on Iraq’s weapons. It’s the same Campbell who, along with Mandelson, was involved in the People’s Vote EU campaign that played a part in Labour’s 2019 election loss. This is the same Campbell who was anti-Jeremy Corbyn, and who Labour subsequently expelled.

‘There’s always an agenda’

Neither Mandelson nor Campbell have even remotely left-wing principles. They are both careerists. Both men are more interested in corporate capitalism than egalitarianism. Yet some people are now portraying both as a pair of moral compasses.

So, as Mendoza summed-up:

The people promoting both Mandelson and Campbell are either:

  • Thinking that finding common ground with them is good.
  • Deluded.
  • Acting in bad faith.

Make your minds up which one you think it is.

Featured image via flydime – Wikimedia, the Guardian – YouTube and the Financial Times – YouTube

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  • Show Comments

    1. Stefanovic has never once mentioned Julian Assange on his page, in spite of me reminding him again and again of Assange’s plight. Stefanovic is a charlatan out of the same mold as Campbell and Mandelson. So this article is committing the same mistake as all those others who have bigged up the two old scumbags.

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    2. Mandelson and Campbell are commonplace representatives of the host of careerists who have joined Labour because they loathe socialism: Gaitskell, Jenkins, Williams, Owen, Callaghan, Blair. They all hate the idea of dissolving the essential relation of capitalism: employer and employee. They despise the idea of equality. They are fully committed to capitalism. They see “lesser” peoples as expendable: that is how their “progress” works. The powerful wipe out the weak. They disdain democracy which they work hard to restrict to a democratic political framework within which the people can be manipulated and duped to serve their careers and wealth. Labour has attracted these people since its inception. It was born out of the effort of the common folk to improve their own lot but as soon as big careers, money, fame and power were available the cockroaches came running. The 19th century people’s movement rested on solidarity. These people promote atomisation. They are more dangerous than the Tories because the Tories don’t pretend to stand for anything but capitalism. Labour is the enemy of the liberty of the common folk. It is nest of manipulative self-seekers. Our effort should go into detaching the common folk from Labour. Let people control their own lives. That is liberty. Campbell and Mandelson stand for voluntary servitude. People trust them because they are duped by the rhetoric and the media. Labour is a party of capitalism ie inequality, injustice, power in the hands of a few. It needs to be killed off then the people can liberate themselves, as they were doing till Labour came along.

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