It is always important to have perspective.
Last night I watched the Iraq War episode of the new three-part C4 documentary about Tony Blair. It included a brief interview with Peter Mandelson-Darkness (with, inevitably, an apologia at the end indicating that it was filmed before his disgrace).
He spoke lucidly and intelligently; and perhaps, even now, it is worth remembering that Mandelson-Darkness was not all bad. Clearly dishonest behaviour when it came to his financial or personal advancement was a significant issue – and an ability to turn a blind eye to major faults of powerful men he patronised – but his contribution to the Labour Party's successes in the 1997-2010 period was immense.
Also, to be fair, he was opposed to the Iraq War. Google AI has this: “At the time of the 2003 Iraq war, Peter Mandelson was a vocal Labour backbencher who, despite being a close ally of Tony Blair, expressed significant reservations, calling the invasion ‘unnecessary, expensive, and illegal’. He feared the conflict was based on ‘tunnel vision’ and challenged the lack of a post-war plan.”
(Jeremy Corbyn, incidentally, was shown in the documentary, in a speech made at the time, predicting almost exactly what the outcome of the Iraq War turned out to be.)
So Mandelson-Darkness is not just a wrong ’un. He is a substantial political figure brought low by a major fault of character.
In other words, his downfall is a tragedy, in the proper theatrical definition of the term, which Google AI summarises thus: “A tragedy dramatises the downfall of a noble protagonist through a fatal error in judgment (hamartia) or excessive pride (hubris).”
“Noble” may be going a bit far in the case of Mandelson-Darkness – but hamartia and hubris were certainly central to his and Mountbatten-Windsor’s characters. In the latter’s case, hamartias (plural)...
