Editorial

Peter Mandelson is the personification of recent British politics. The post-Thatcher era, when many old arguments faded away and presentational flair eclipsed ideology, has been the time of the image consultant, the court politician and the fixer—in other words, of Mandelsonian politics. Many people regard such crafts as grubby and cynical; but they are appropriate to a pragmatic, managerial period in politics, and no less honourable, in their way, than the aptitudes associated with passionate belief. A more telling critique of Mandelsonian methods is that they are often married to a populism in which polls and focus groups squeeze out the slow, deliberative machinery of parliaments and even cabinets. As Peter Kellner argues, in his polemic against populist democracy, new Labour since 1997 has been responsible for a sharp increase in the use of referendums as well as a closer focus on voter sentiment—all part of a wider shift in power away from parliament and civil service towards media and public opinion. It was Mandelson, as Labour's communications director in the 1980s, who taught the party to embrace these new political techniques. Much of this was sensible professionalism. But he also embraced the shift away from elite-led representative democracy. In a speech in 1998, cited in Edward Docx's cover story, he said: "Today people want to be more involved.

Representative government is being complemented by more direct forms… from the internet to referendums. This requires a different style of politics and we are trying to respond." Put like that, it is hard to disagree. But it is somehow fitting that Mandelson should rise (again) to the pinnacle of power in Gordon Brown's tottering government just when our politics has been battered by popular outrage and when most responses to it point to even more people power. He is reaping what he helped to sow. And now the issue is almost the reverse of giving people more voice: how to harness the public's fickle interest in the political process without undermining the institutions of representative democracy and the elites who must manage them. Easier said than done, especially after the Telegraph's expenses campaign, which has done more damage to our political elite than the Soviet Union, the IRA and al Qaeda combined.

Docx's gripping, novelistic appraisal of Mandelson concludes that he is a surprisingly old Labour figure. Certainly, if he was merely an image-obsessed political fixer, his rise to power at a time of economic and political troubles would be cause for alarm (even if the economic distress seems to be bottoming out). But Docx shows that he is also a focused and talented administrator with a cool head. Just the man, then, for this peculiar postmodern crisis?