'Brown has Chosen to Be a Hostage to the Blairites Rather Than Leave Number 10. But Mandelson's Friend? Not Until Hell Freezes Over' Westminster Editor James Cusick Analyses the Latest and Most Remarkable Comeback of One of the Architects of New Labour

Sunday Herald › October 06, 2008

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Summary

IF it's hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head, Gordon Brown's decision to bring Peter Mandelson into his cabinet is a high-risk psychological gamble. Number 10's former communications director, Alastair Campbell, once suggested to Tony Blair that he hold an "honesty" press conference, where he would openly admit that "Gordon and Peter really do hate each other". Now Mandelson, once Brown's sworn enemy, is inside and at the centre of his adversary's compound, and, according to some close to Brown, "has been given the power to turn Gordon into a Blairite hostage".

While much of Friday's reshuffle centred on who was up, who down, and whom the prime minister really couldn't afford to move in these extraordinary financial times, Mandelson's re-entry into the cabinet after four years as a trade commissioner in Europe was accompanied by a clear-out inside Number 10 that leaves Mandelson with the two areas of expertise he believes he excels in. And they are not the international trade credentials on which the prime minister focused last week.

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Extract

'Brown has Chosen to Be a Hostage to the Blairites Rather Than Leave Number 10. But Mandelson's Friend? Not Until Hell Freezes Over' Westminster Editor James Cusick Analyses the Latest and Most Remarkable Comeback of One of the Architects of New Labour

Gone from Number 10, in what Brown will be hoping is day zero of a failed and now remodelled administration, are Stephen Carter and Damien McBride.

Carter was the key figure of a previous relaunch, brought in to be the independent mind that would oversee a culture-change of Brown's old guard, who had been schooled in the in-fighting of "opposition" against Blair for a decade. A former head of Ofcom and a leading public relations firm, Carter was supposed to become Brown's most senior politic...

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