Lord Mandelson’s spin is reigniting Labour war, says John Prescott
LORD Mandelson’s memoirs sparked a political backlash yesterday – even before their publication.
Newly-ennobled John Prescott urged Labour to forget past splits as the book threatened to re-ignite the Blairite-Brownite civil war.
He defended Lord Mandelson’s right to produce a book, as he had, to “put the record straight,” although the former Business Secretary was doing it “with a certain amount of egging and spinning”.
Lord Prescott spoke after close Gordon Brown ally Charlie Whelan hit back at Lord Mandelson for saying in an interview that Mr Brown was “very badly served” by his aides and their “contempt” for Tony Blair. Mr Whelan said: “We lost the election because we started attacking each other internally about Brown and Blair, now being reiterated in Peter’s book, and people on the sides coming in and blaming somebody else.”
Lord Prescott told BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show that Mr Whelan was “doing now what used to happen to Labour before and it did contribute to our defeat. Can we put that behind us...it does us damage”.
Lord Mandelson’s book is being serialised from today.