Out with the new Labour

He has already antagonised members and supporters through his self-serving book that was published just after the general election and on which he must have been working when many people were getting stuck into trying to win back Labour voters who had been alienated by his new Labour faction.

And the idea that party members undecided about who to back have been waiting for the word from Mandelson before plumping for David Miliband is utterly preposterous.

It is on a par with the suggestion that Tony Blair's interview with new Labour sycophant Andrew Marr, in which he is expected to say that electing Ed Miliband would be a disaster, is eagerly awaited by Labour members for guidance.

This is not 1997 and a lot of blood has flowed under the bridge since those heady days when far-reaching change seemed possible.

Mandelson's idea that it is possible to recreate the electoral coalition that brought Labour a landslide victory that year is risible.

Labour romped into office then, defeating a Tory Party that was seen as divided, incompetent and as bent as a nine-bob note.

Despite the assiduously worked myths about the supposed special powers of Blair, Mandelson and Alastair Campbell, Labour was on track to win the 1997 election whoever its leader was.

Blair certainly had the ability to communicate with mass audiences, but he was still largely an unknown quantity. He could get away with self-description as "a pretty straight kind of a guy."

Any attempt to fly that kite now would be laughed at. Everybody knows that he lied to people and Parliament to honour his pledge to George W Bush that British troops would support the illegal US invasion of Iraq.

Most are aware that he sold knighthoods and peerages to raise money for his party.

And they have seen his single-minded determination to amass huge amounts of personal wealth from those whose interests he championed most strongly while prime minister.

Mandelson suggests that shutting the door on new Labour is tantamount to "slamming the door in the faces of millions of voters who voted for our party."

He is oblivious to the fact that new Labour's priorities of war, privatisation, authoritarianism, dishonesty and looking after the rich meant a constant decline in Labour's vote after 1997, with five million voters going missing. And it will take much more than new Labour spin and conjuring tricks to persuade them to come home.

Mandelson appears to believe that it is possible to bring back the excitement and the broad appeal of 1997, but he and Blair are two of the reasons why it isn't.

He is remembered mainly for securing a huge interest-free loan from another minister and for stabbing colleagues in the back.

New Labour lectured working people on the need for restraint while welcoming telephone-number salaries and bonuses in the City as a sign of well-earned success.

This tawdry brand has had its day. It can't be tarted up through a makeover. It has to be dumped.

If Labour is to win back its lost voters, it has to reconnect with them by championing social justice, letting the rich pay their fair share and putting jobs and industrial investment before military spending.