Peter Mandelson warns Labour of tough road ahead
Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell say Labour should not be complacent despite good poll ratings, with Lord Mandelson warning that the party faces a much harder challenge than in 1997.
Speaking at a fringe event at the Labour conference, Peter Mandelson said that the party tends to do well when the economy is booming and not in recession.
Former spin doctor Alastair Campbell also said that despite Labour being ten points ahead in the polls, that could easily change.
Two of the architects of New Labour were speaking at a fringe event in Manchester dedicated to the late Labour strategist Philip Gould, who died last year.
“As a creative, thinking party, we have got to apply our brains and policy making to improving public services, without actually being able to spend more money on those public services, in the way we have done before,” said Lord Mandelson. “That’s a much harder challenge that the one we faced in 1997.”
When asked what Philip Gould, author of The Unfinished Revolution, would say about the party now, Lord Mandelson added to calls for a clearer narrative from the Labour Party: “He’d say; ‘Tactics without strategy is noise before defeat.’ We need a clear strategy”.
Mr Campbell said that he thought that the public was starting to wake up to Labour, but added that opinion polls should not be given too much emphasis.
“Don’t be positive and upbeat because we’re 10 points ahead in the polls. We should be upbeat if we’re 20 points ahead in the polls, a month before the election,” he said.
The two men discussed what went wrong for Labour in the past, and agreed that the ideas behind New Labour should remain in the past.
And Mr Campbell couldn’t resist a dig at the Conservatives. When asked why he voted for Labour in the past, he said: “I have always rather despised the Tories. That doesn’t mean there aren’t Tories that I like … but as a mind-set and a breed, I have always passionately not liked them.”
