Robert Harris has dedicated Lustrum, the second of his planned trilogy on the Roman statesman Cicero (106-43 bc), to Baron Mandelson, commenting on the two men’s resemblances. There are indeed some.
Both were outsiders who made their own way into elite politics by traditional routes, reached the top briefly, and fell from grace. Cicero, from a grandee family in the sticks, used his growing reputation as an advocate in Rome to work his way to the top. But after his consulship in 63 bc, he had served the elite’s purpose and his career stalled. In 58 bc he was exiled for a year and in 52 bc, much against his will, was sent abroad to govern in south-east Turkey.
Mandelson’s grandfather was deputy prime minister, but there was no Bush-style political succession. After the usual play-acting with Young Socialists etc., he was appointed Labour’s director of communications in 1985. There, like Cicero, he gained a reputation as a formidable master of persuasion, but behind the scenes. He reached Cabinet office, twice, was forced to resign, twice, and was sent abroad into the European Commission.
The big difference is what happened next. Cicero made no comeback. Having built no political power-base, incapable of constructing any concordia between Pompey and Caesar, who seemed to him to be destroying everything Rome stood for, and with no stomach for a fight, he turned to philosophy. He invented the Roman version and wrote brilliantly on a huge range of ethical and political issues, especially the ability to persuade.
Not Mandelson. For Pompey-Caesar, read Blair-Brown. Having invented New Labour with Blair to destroy Old Labour, he returned from ‘exile’, unelected and with no public mandate, to become (incredibly) the most powerful man in Old Labour under his sworn enemy Brown!
In politics ancient and modern, no one gets anywhere without the ability to persuade.
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