Grand Panjandrums should not be Trusted

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When Lord Mandelson criticises Ed Miliband for proposing a freeze on energy bills you know that the old nexus of control freakery condoned by Blair and Brown is still bubbling beneath the surface of labour politics. The subservience to media management and business lobbying that allowed the financial sector to hold the population to ransom and took no action as our largest companies were bought by foreign sovereign wealth funds and hedge funds should be a lesson in how not to govern. It allowed many public sector activities to be sold cheaply and then stripped of their assets. It introduced a choking regulation regime of the public sector whilst encouraging a helium-light touch with the financial sector.  It turned a blind eye to the tax evasion of large corporates and held a misguided belief in the efficiency and effectiveness of free markets. The UK's emergence as a virtual tax haven and country ravaged by economic and social injustice has run in parallel with Lord Mandelson's career as the Grand Panjandrum. Someone the BBC even called the "real Prime Minister."

Mandelson's charge that the energy companies would no longer invest in modernising the industry is risible. They have increased prices well above inflation or supply costs and have taken huge profits whilst showing that they have little to learn from the banks when it comes to minimising their tax payments. The investment in new energy sources that they claim will be lost has been heavily subsidised by the government whether this is for proposed nuclear power stations or the investment in sustainable energy like wind, solar, and wave power.

As I recall Lord Mandelson was an apologist for the financial sector during the last government urging that they be allowed to operate freely in the world economy and develop the various tools that helped strip the UK of its assets and allowed legalised gambling and double and triple charging for the investment of our savings and pensions. He was a strong advocate of grand gestures like the Millennium Dome,  Brown's use of PFI to build hospitals, and schools and transport projects like the London underground. But for the revolt of MPs, he would have privatised the Royal Mail four years ago. He saw the creation of academies as the future of education and nurtured an irritating charisma that has since been latched onto by Michael Gove.

The issue as always is one of trust. The government needs to invest in new infrastructure and ensure that essential services are available and affordable for all. They can do this through democratically controlled bodies or agencies or by purchasing these from the private sector. Neither can do it all and both sectors have distinctive advantages and disadvantages. Until 1980 there was a consensus about this from all sides. It was Harold MacMillan's conservative government that built 400,000 new houses a year largely by building what we now call social housing. Just as it was Harold Wilson's Labour government that ramped up investment in the Universities. In both cases, the private construction companies tendered and carried out the construction work but it was the public sector that managed the facilities and provided the services. There was a collaboration between the public and private sectors that benefited both and minimised the name-calling that has become the norm since the Thatcher years when the public sector was first declared toxic by the press barons.

As Britain languishes on the cusp of re-emerging from the longest-ever recession and the corporate sector gears itself up for another episode of financial trickery, the general population face stagnant incomes, longer working life and the prospect of diminishing pensions. Ed Miliband is right to draw a line in the sand. It is a great pity that the grand panjandrum of the Blair and Brown years still sees it as his right to reprise his damaging interventions of yesteryear. But Lord Mandelson is no longer in his pomp, he is in terminal decline as the Labour Party seems to be shedding its love affair with the moguls and corporates and seeking to redress the balance between public and private sectors.

Coming up on the rails is his natural successor, the Tories' own grand panjandrum - Michael Gove. Someone who should be exiled to the panel programme 'Just a Minute', for he can speak with feigned enthusiasm without repeating himself or making any real sense for as long as air time exists. His interventions over the last few days have been to defend the Daily Mail over its treatment of the Milliband family and to continue his campaign against local state schools. There is a long essay waiting to be written on his baleful influence on these matters but for now, we can only hope that his influence over the PM does not have the damaging impact that his predecessor as the government's Grand Panjandrum achieved with Blair and Brown.

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