Everyone has a treasured item of clothing, a piece that they wear because it reminds them of someone or something, a time and a place.
This silk Paul Smith scarf, with green polka dots on a deep dark blue base is mine. I sometimes tell friends I call it my 'Peter Mandelson scarf'. Not because he bought it for me or anything, or because it reminds me of a great day we spent together, but because it represents a symbol of my own personal resilience and my ability to shake off setbacks.
Part of my job when I worked at Manchester Metropolitan University was to find useful things for our then Chancellor to do, for it was he. I had initially been the conduit to approach him to meet with the VC and the Chair of Governors and accept the offer to become the Chancellor, a pro bono role, mainly ceremonial and ambassadorial.
At his installation ceremony, where I was tasked with making sure he turned up on time and knew who everyone was, I was mistakenly identified by the official photographer as his personal security detail when he asked me if I was ex-Army or ex-Police (I know, I look well hard don’t I?).
It was a new job and I had to carve out a place for myself in a sprawling organisation, not always successfully.
Even though it was in my job description, slowly the responsibility for utilising the skills and connections of “Lord M” moved away from me.
I wasn’t invited to the Chancellor’s Dinner in the summer, or involved in the Graduation ceremonies when he was present, and certainly didn’t go to Wuhan in China as part of the entourage when a deal was struck.
Which brings me to the scarf. I’d been encouraged to go to the offices of Global Counsel and meet with Peter and his CEO. It was early in the job and I had high hopes for how we might work together, especially as I had some ideas about industrial policy that a former minister could input on.
The meeting didn’t go well. They didn’t seem to know I was coming, and seemed distracted and disinterested in me and what I had to say. I came away feeling that I’d made a fool of myself thinking I could move in these circles and be taken even vaguely seriously, that I was a lower league lightweight. I left feeling really flat and so went to the Paul Smith shop in Beak Street to buy myself something nice to cheer myself up, so that my trip to London wasn’t entirely wasted.
In the reset of my relationship, with a great bunch of colleagues, we set up MetroPolis, a think tank that was something of a forerunner in the education sector. It was designed to project policy relevant research work into the attention of policy makers. Part of the offer was a series of Chancellor’s Fellowships in his name, which connected academics to think tanks and government departments, and proved really effective when the university submitted its work for the REF assessment a few years later.
I wrote some speech notes for a HE conference, which seemed to go down well at the time. He also spoke at a couple of events under the MetroPolis banner, and always drew a big crowd, especially if we framed it as being about Brexit.
One thing though, my colleagues in the comms team were always reluctant to promote his involvement, because he was such a controversy magnet. Understandable when your job is to protect the reputation of the University.
At the outset I was genuinely quite excited about the potential and the prospects for a senior politician being involved. My day to day job often meant showing government ministers, local senior leaders and opposition politicians, what the university was doing. They included at different times Sajid Javid, Chris Skidmore, Margot James, Sam Gyimah, early meetings with elected Mayor Andy Burnham, all the local MPs, including Jonny Reynolds and Lucy Powell.
The last event I was involved in with him was at the Manchester Tech Centre, where he was the warm up act for Andy Burnham, something the Mayor took great delight in reminding everyone how the roles were once reversed.
After I left in May 2021, (the picture is at my leaving drinks, wearing THAT SCARF), I got a very nice email from him telling me I’d done a good job for the university and wished me well. But we haven’t spoken since. I haven’t reached out, and though we were both at an event in 2022 and he saw me, he didn’t come and say hello.
I’m not writing this to distance myself from him any more, but to remind myself that although I sometimes allow people to assume I mixed in such circles, I don’t and I didn’t. It was also a realisation that at heart I’m a hack, a journalist, and simply don’t aspire to power and money. I mean, look where it gets you when you do.
But also, some people curl up in embarrassment after the revelations about people who they worked with who disgrace themselves. I have called this out and will continue to do so. Maybe they witnessed things where they turned a blind eye. In the case of the former Chancellor, I certainly don’t have any dirt I’m sitting on. Though he was often imperious, and aloof, he was also charming when he wanted to be.
One of the most impressive, professional and courteous former leaders I met in the course of that job, and the next one, was Gordon Brown. My esteem for him has only grown over the years with everything he says and does.
The emails released this week appear to show the most shameful betrayal of the former Prime Minister, who has said he regards the Mandelson’s disclosure of market sensitive and confidential government information to Jeffrey Epstein, “an inexcusable and unpatriotic act” at the time he was dealing with the global financial crisis that was damaging so many livelihoods.
I felt disappointed and deflated all those years ago, but nothing compared to the abject betrayal that Gordon Brown will be feeling now.
