Stephen Pound: Labour will ‘bleed’ from Mandelson scandal

A former Labour minister has said the Labour party will “bleed” from the fall out from the Peter Mandelson scandal.

Speaking on GB News, Stephen Pound said: “There are a couple of things that really depress me about this: firstly, and this may come as a surprise to some people, Peter Mandelson was an incredibly effective minister in Northern Ireland.

“His idea to give the RUC the George Cross, which had previously been awarded to the Island of Malta, went down very well indeed and he was very, very clever.

“However, I think he was overcome by his own image; he flew too close to the sun.

“It’s profoundly embarrassing. Peter Mandelson was known as the ‘third man’ – Blair, Brown, and Mandelson.

“There’s been no less spun and more unspun politician in the history of this country than Gordon Brown; you couldn’t spin Brown if you put him on a turntable.

“But back in 1995/96, it was a stroke of genius. I remember being in Millbank and there was some attack on us and he said, ‘Get me a bishop straight away!’

“And we got a bishop on the phone to refute this. He was very, very clever.

“There’s a possibility of criminal action here. If this was commercially sensitive information that was given to another person, that is a criminal.

“I don’t think it damages the reputation of Tony Blair particularly. I think it damages the reputation of the Labour Party and it gives me no pleasure whatever to say that.

“Because some of some of the barbs that you were thrusting at us a few moments ago will stick and will hurt and we will bleed from them. But it makes the task of actually trying to recover that faith and get the faith back with the British people all the more important.

“There are some sea green incorruptibles in Labour, I don’t think anyone could accuse Gordon Brown of being anything other than that.

“But..this man did have a certain amount of magic. Maybe he was a snake oil salesman, I don’t know. All I can say is the closest I was to him in Northern Ireland, I saw a consummate politician, a man who could play the public like a pianist. He was brilliant at that.

“However, as we now know, he was maybe a whited sepulchre.”