Dear Peter, here’s how to revive the Labour party

To: Peter Mandelson
From: Daniel Finkelstein
Re: What Labour should do now

I was, naturally, flattered to be informed that you would like me to provide you with a memo of advice on how Labour should cope with its predicament. As I explained to your assistant, I do not have much of a history of helping out the leadership of the Labour party. He said that this did not matter, as neither did the Prime Minister.

As for you and me, we haven’t spoken much these past 20 years. So I am relieved to discover that you regard such long periods of silence as perfectly natural in a friendship.

In 1997, as you may possibly recall, we were on opposite sides of a campaign. I was working for John Major, you for Tony Blair. You, ahem, won. But I learned things from that defeat which might be helpful to you now.

Before I set out my ideas, we had better deal with Gordon Brown.