Factionalism gave us Mandelson. We must do better – Neil Duncan-Jordan MP

“Our country needs to get back its moral compass; to rediscover what public service means and to speak up for those who have no voice.”

By Neil Duncan-Jordan MP

The recent Mandelson/Epstein affair has taught us everything we need to know about what’s wrong with our political system. Rich and powerful men often believe they are above the law and can do whatever they like.

They have the power and influence to corrupt our political decision-making process and to cover up their actions afterwards. In the Epstein case, it was a horrific catalogue of child and sexual abuse, and the exploitation of young women and girls. With Mandelson, his venal desire to mix with those people and enjoy the trappings of their exploitative wealth allegedly led him to betray our country.

Readers with long memories will be aware that Mandelson has had a chequered political past. In 1998, he was forced into his first ministerial resignation after it emerged that he had received a secret £373,000 loan from fellow minister Geoffrey Robinson.

In 2001, a second resignation followed, given some dubious dealings around the wealthy Hinduja brothers’ passport applications, and fast-forward 16 years, and Mandelson’s “casual corruption” has finally caught up with him. He is accused of leaking sensitive government information to Epstein and of offering to lobby ministers over a bankers’ bonus tax in 2009.

So why would anyone, not least the Prime Minister, have appointed him to serve in the first place? Alarm bells should have been ringing from day one when his name was mentioned for a role. You didn’t need to know the extent of his relationship with the convicted Epstein because enough was already in the public domain to make you think twice.

It is an odious example of the rotten factionalism at the top of the Labour Party that only weeks ago, Peter Mandelson – an associate of the world’s most infamous paedophile – was deemed fit to sit within the Parliamentary Labour Party, while the Mayor of Manchester was blocked.

A Labour Party truly interested in drawing on the strengths of its broad church and wider movement would never have brought someone as irredeemably flawed as Peter Mandelson back into the fold. This must be a moment for the leadership to reflect that loyalty, factional alignment or internal alliances are not the only qualifications for high office. Integrity, decency, and those oft-repeated but too rarely understood words – Labour values, must matter more.

If we want to be a rules-based nation that upholds the very highest standards in public life, we must define ourselves by our actions.

Likewise, politicians who fail to pay their taxes, take lavish gifts from benefactors or have second jobs while serving as an MP, seriously undermine the public’s trust and confidence in the entire system.

If we fail to behave like decent, honest people, then the public will start to look elsewhere for their leaders. As we seek to expose Reform as a rebranded Tory project in service to the super-rich, our leadership undermines its own argument when it mirrors their practices and culture. Chasing Farage’s tail with reactionary policies while cultivating cosy relationships with the very wealthy elites and rich donors our Labour Party was built to challenge – not court.  That contradiction is politically corrosive and morally indefensible.

We need to demonstrate that we are not in it for ourselves, that we have the interests of our constituents at the heart of what we do and the overwhelming desire to do what’s best for those we serve.

I’ve said before that the word politician is so tainted and mistrusted by the public that I don’t use it. When asked, I’ll tell people: “I’m not a politician, I only work in politics”.

Our country needs to get back its moral compass; to rediscover what public service means and to speak up for those who have no voice. The Mandelsons of this world – and those who enabled him to reach the highest rungs of the political ladder – should realise their time is up.

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• Neil Duncan-Jordan is the Labour MP for Poole. You can follow him on Twitter/X, Facebook and Instagram.
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