30/11/2023
Centre left political figure and Labour Party grandee, Lord Peter Mandelson, who is gay, and has suffered tabloid homophobia at several times during his long and controversial political career, has given an interview to the podcast How to Win an Election. According to a report in the Independent newspaper, Lord Mandelson said that he disapproved of efforts by the left wing of the Labour Party to persuade the party's leadership to join the harder left and peace movement in calling for Israel to observe a ceasefire in the current conflict over the Gaza territory of Palestine. The New Labour architect urged Sir Keir to ignore the rebellion in his own party, and compared Israel’s war against Hamas to the UK’s fight against the Provisional IRA in the 1980s and 1990s. Mr Mandelson served as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland at the turn of the last century. “This is cold blooded murder that has been visited on the Israeli people" he said. " “That’s what we had to do in Northern Ireland during the seventies and the eighties. And yes, we did disable the Provisional IRA. We did defeat them militarily, and then we drove them to a position where they had no alternative but to turn to politics and to negotiate a peace agreement. Now, that’s not the precise circumstances that we’re facing in Israel or Gaza, obviously not. But … in due course, we will turn to politics, we will turn to negotiation. But that time is a long way off. And in the meantime, we have to defeat cold blooded murderers.” Referring to Lord Mandelson, who is extremely private about his private life and rarely gets involved directly in gay politics, Wikipedia notes "During his time as a former government leader, the press – tabloid and broadsheet alike – often portrayed Mandelson as effeminate through "the linguistic resources of camp" and narcissistic – sometimes including coded references to homosexual acts in their descriptions of his actions." The British right wing newspapers have never apologised to Lord Mandelson for their shameful homophobia against him.
