The latest tranche of files about Lord Peter Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador to Washington contains some big surprises.
Who would have predicted, for instance, that it would be Pat McFadden who would end up being the Liam Byrne of this Labour Government, writing in a private message to Mandelson that “every meeting I have is ‘who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others’. They’re asking the wrong questions”. The “there’s no money!” jokey note that Byrne left to his successor in the Treasury in 2010 ended up tarring Labour all the way to the next election. This “who can we tax” message will have the same effect.
But another surprise is that any of these messages were retrievable at all. In the past five years or so, most politicians have become very aware that even private WhatsApp messages between friends can end up in the public. In fact, most MPs now tend to use WhatsApp groups to get more public attention: a leaked message has far more cachet than a simple post on X.
It used to be the case that journalists felt quite excited when an MP passed them screenshots of a group chat; now their heart tends to sink, as the messages will all have been written rather cynically, with a wider audience in mind. They are less an insight into what MPs really think than they are just part of a comms strategy.
