Steve Richards: Arrogance bred by party breakdown

Peter Mandelson and George Osborne are both tribal figures. Mandelson was born in the Labour party and will die in it. He was not tempted by the fleeting glamour of the SDP in the 1980s and remained a Labour man when Gordon Brown became leader, even if he fumed about him to Osborne under the sunny skies of Corfu. Mandelson will always be Labour.

Osborne is a Tory to the end of his fingertips. After Oxford and the Bullingdon Club, there were plenty of possible career opportunities. Osborne chose the Tory party. He worked behind the scenes for William Hague when his party was at its lowest ebb and now is the Conservatives' second-most important figure. Whatever happens to the Tories in the years to come, and indeed whatever happens to Osborne, the man and the party will not go their separate ways. Osborne will always be a Tory.

Related articles

• Most voters think Osborne lacks judgment to be Chancellor
• Cameron, Murdoch and a Greek island freebie
• Inquiry into US banker's party tickets
• Jeremy Warner: Deripaska, Rothschild and me
• Search the news archive for more stories

Yet the rise of these two tribal figures highlights the decline of political parties as potent forces in Britain. In their different ways, both of them float freely at the top of British politics unencumbered by constraints and considerations placed on previous generations of mighty individuals. Sometimes Mandelson and Osborne have the freedom to act brilliantly. Both are astute strategists. Sometimes they also have the freedom to make foolish mistakes which they might have avoided if they had more vibrant, challenging parties to keep them on their toes. I mean political parties – not social gatherings on a yacht.

For Mandelson, the freedom to make mistakes has proven nearly fatal to his career. Osborne's freedom to make complacent misjudgements in Corfu has damaged his standing at a time when, as shadow Chancellor, he is tested by an epoch-changing financial crisis.

Why didn't Osborne's normally sharp antennae alert him to any of the dangers as he met a Russian oligarch several times? I suspect that the context played its part. The Tories were well ahead in the polls this summer and Brown looked doomed. Most of the media was paying homage to the Conservative leadership and gunning for the Prime Minister. Osborne could relax on his luxurious holiday and have a ball. When it came to leaking damaging material against Mandelson to a newspaper, Osborne was also free to act as he saw fit. He is one of a small group running the Conservative party. The Shadow Cabinet, the parliamentary party and the membership do not get much of a look in. He and Cameron, along with their respective teams, work together in adjoining offices. They pull the strings. Quite often when events erupt, Cameron asks a single question: "What does George think?" Holding such unconstrained sway can lead to cockiness and blunt antennae.

Similarly after he became leader in 1994, Tony Blair used to demand: "Get me Peter!" when he needed advice on big and small matters. Mandelson was a star because of his close relationship with the leader. He had toiled nobly for the Labour party behind the scenes since the mid-1980s, but had only limited experience of a public role: how to behave, what to say and when. The public role is part of being a complete politician.

Still Mandelson mattered hugely after 1994. The rest of the shadow cabinet and Labour MPs could have spent the entire period between 1994 to the election in 1997 on holiday in Bognor Regis. They were irrelevant. Almost the same applies to the Conservatives now.

Parts of the media fill the gap left by formerly more influential parties. When I heard about the return of Mandelson to the Cabinet I suggested to a fellow columnist that the astonishing move could work only if the returning minister spent less time talking to journalists. He needed to keep his head down. The columnist told me had just finished a lengthy conversation with Mandelson.

The Tory leadership are at least as influenced by a few columnists, bloggers and leader writers. Even Cameron cannot resist logging into some bloggers to get their latest verdicts. I can understand this. But these addictions can be dangerous if unchecked. Look at how much of the media has turned on Mandelson, the supposed master of spin. Some newspapers and blogs are determined even to blame him for Osborne's misdemeanours.

But the Tories' friends in the media do not always do the leadership a favour. In their Brown onslaughts and soft treatment of Cameron and Osborne, they can generate a complacency that brought about the Corfu crisis, and a misguided sense that their media friends are part of almost a formal alliance.

Three weekends ago there was an epoch-changing collapse in the financial markets. Osborne should have been spending every waking moment thinking about how his party should revise its views in the changed situation. Instead he was busy speaking to journalists, telling one about his conversations with Mandelson on Corfu. Here is a big difference with New Labour in the mid- 1990s. Blair and Brown were obsessed with the media but, unlike the Tories, they would not have responded so superficially to the apocalyptic events in recent weeks.

The Tory leadership's friends in the media have not done them many favours during the financial crisis. Several Cameroonian columnists have slammed Gordon Brown and praised the Tory approach. Last week, after intensive discussions with Osborne, Cameron delivered a weak speech on the crisis that echoed this theme, attacking Brown. He would have been wiser to have attempted something bigger. But who is there to offer such advice?

Currently I am reading Bernard Donoughue's vivid diaries chronicling the final years of the Labour government up until 1979 when Jim Callaghan was famously constrained by long cabinet meetings and an almost deranged party. I am not suggesting a return to such dysfunctional decision-making, but sometimes out of those wider consultations much better decisions emerged. Similarly memoirs of former Tory ministers stress the importance of a range of bodies and individuals within the Conservative party while they were preparing for government in the late 1970s. For them it was more than a game played by entourages at the top, interacting with the media and rich Russians.

Political leaders do not like assertive parties, but sometimes they are better for them. Otherwise the likes of Osborne and Mandelson, floating freely at the top, will make more casual misjudgements even if they are unlikely to be holiday companions ever again.

s.richards@independent.co.uk

More from Steve Richards