Blair and Mandelson were two parts of the triumvirate that created the triumphant New Labour project in the late 1990s. If we want to understand why democracy is in such trouble, the careers of Blair and Mandelson are exemplary: greed and cynicism feeding off each other. It is hard to remember now, but Blair was helping to give politics a good name. And precisely because Blair had seemed to embody a reinvigorated post-cold war democratic politics, the harm was not confined to Britain. Blair and Mandelson will go down in history as crawlers and creeps.

Source: The Irish Times February 03, 2026 13:32 UTC