That said, being a natural at any of these things doesn't mean being naturally good at them. It just means: being able to swim in that pool. And many swimmers in the strategy pool turn out to be bad strategists.
Lots of situations and organisations need strategy: and there's a tendency to grab at anyone who seems to be a swimmer in that pool, and/or for people who can to thrust themselves forward. But really good strategists are few and far between: so it's not infrequent for a mediocre, or even poor strategist to be directing things, and it not even be realised for quite a while. What's needed is the leadership to say, decisively, "yes, we need a strategist - but not a crap one". Obviously, Starmer is no such leader.
Among high-profile genuine, but deeply flawed UK political strategists of recent years I would number George Osborne (often lambasted hereabouts for being no more than mere student-politico grade); Dominic Cummings (whose only thought after the very successful 2019 election campaign was "turn government upside down" instead of "deliver actual results from Brexit", making him just a self-indulgent blue-sky obsessive); and of course Peter Mandelson.
Like many of this kind, Mandelson is really interesting. Long-term C@W readers will oft have seen me praising his political creativity and deep understanding of how the levers of power can be used in imaginative ways. I don't resile from any of that. But throughout his well-documented career, he has made gigantic mis-steps galore, often rebounding directly and very personally upon himself, notwithstanding his ability sometimes to deliver superb strategic advice to those he is gazing up to at the time, from the, errr, grovelling position he adopts.
His actions in advancing his own cause or defending his won position - often when seriously up against it - have frequently been purposeful and genuinely adroit, albeit pretty transparent to anyone paying close attention (and sometimes to the whole world). I could list many examples; and particularly enjoyed his very clever handling of what he knew was going to be a ghastly series of revelations the moment the latest Epstein cache hit the media. Getting ahead of it as best he could; lots of well-chosen exculpatory themes, remorse, blame upon others, "being too trusting", willing to be open & honest about it all, "bigger boys / nasty lawyers dropped me in it" etc etc. Ultimately a doomed effort, of course, but a miniature masterclass. (I might even come up with a fisk of his recent performances.)
So: Mandelson - good or bad strategist? My summary would be: technically brilliant; genuinely creative; mostly succeeding when taking on a difficult task on behalf of / at the behest of someone else; oddly lazy in his own cause (a bit paradoxical, admittedly - but I could elaborate: and it's a trait I have noted in others).
It's a big topic. Other first thoughts?
ND
What will be revealed next? Something dodgy about a mortgage again? Taking gifts and freebies while an Ambassador?
ReplyDeleteBut sheriously, would a clever strategist still have ties to that thumping crook Toni Blair?
According to Guido, a candidate to replace Mandelturd is Lindsay Croisedale-Appleby. She is, I assume, a niece of Sir Humphrey.
ReplyDeleteI actually thought Mandelson (who I detest) was a pretty good choice for Washington. But being Epstein's best mate doesn't quite have the cachet it once had.
ReplyDeleteEpstein as I understand it specialised in running a gigantic moveable honeytrap hotel for the great and the good, a role which he seems to have enjoyed - see Stephen Hawking in his chair surrounded by half dressed babes - and his madam was the daughter of a Mossad agent herself. The question is, what was Mandelson's interest? Maybe it was just fellow-feeling for another mensch.
Way back I worked for a firm that had some 'strategists'. May be my coarse ignorance but I thought they were mainly BS artists apart from one wise old hand. Sure there is a lot of high falutin management text written on strategy but my feeling is that strategy is the handmaiden of good tactical skill guided by nouse rather than the other way. Far too much glitter given to the word 'strategy'. Strategy is nothing without tactics - and Mandelson did do tactics.
ReplyDeleteI reckon Osborne had some idea but Cummings always seemed a hot house plant. Mandelson, clever chap and a good tactician but I feel he lacked bottom (forgive me), always rather shallow and liable to be very very dodgy. Needed a regular bath in Jeyes Fluid to enter polite society.
Thought it amusing him sent to Washington, a good fit in some circles and conveniently out the way of being a nuisance back home. Let us hope there is a very very deep dark well to chuck him down and never ever hear from him again.
May I humbly suggest the manscaping act of "back, sack, and crack" be renamed The Starmer? It seems to fit his political actions.
ReplyDeleteI tend to think 'strategy' has become a magic word, where meaning has been replaced with marketing.
ReplyDeleteAt heart, it's "we're at A, but we want to be at B, and there are these known challenges along the way, what have we got in our toolkit to get there?" - nothing spectacular about it.
Inventive uses of tools? Sure, they can be spectacular, but in many cases spectacular isn't what you're looking for. You want a Fred Dibnah, not a David Blaine, but the demand is for David Blaine's with furrowed brows as to why the giant chimney has been made invisible half way up, rather than being a pile of bricks on the ground as the actual plan was.
And Mandelson was too fond of the great life, he never met a billionaire whose money he didn't fall in love with. Yachts. Islands. All the twinks he could desire. So much nicer than the old days when all he had was a ropey 'tache. He was always more Miami Vice than Islington Allotment, and that type is always a disaster waiting to happen in politics.
Never believe any rumour until it has been denied three times.
ReplyDeleteAnybody outside the magic circle of UK politico-media "experts" could have predicted that this latest recall of My Noble Lord Fumblebum would end in tears. Indeed, many did. 2 Questions........ Why are the UK politico-media "experts" so tone deaf ? & all this stuff about Epstein, his clique of child abusers, & his well connected chums has been well documented for years.....Just why have these latest revelations surfaced now ?
ReplyDeleteCH - @ what have we got in our toolkit to get there?
ReplyDeleteCan I take issue with that bit of your unpacking of the concept? IMHO, "Come as you are" is really a minor subset of strategy, generally only to be endorsed when hurried action is required. Big problems are often best addressed by a strategy involving development wholly new tactics, and indeed tools of every sort - think Mulberry Harbours and PLUTO for Op Overlord 1944.
Of course, many a lame & lazy strategy uses only the existing toolkit where there would have been time and reason to develop new.
Incidentally, the thinking around "which of our (existing) tools should we use?" characterises what is typically meant by initiativ in the Russian Army: it's knowing which option to pick from the doctrinal manual. Well, sometimes that's a decent fallback for unimaginative officers, or for very standard and/or rushed situations.
At its worst, of course, by "initiative" the British Army often means "inspired muddling through".
Interesting strategy starts with big, new problems requiring imaginative and creative solutions to the "get from A to B" problem. Often an aspect of the challenge set to the 'troubleshooter' (earlier post here - http://www.cityunslicker.co.uk/2025/09/darren-jones-different-kettle-of-fish.html ) - which is where Mandy once shone.
Mandelson is (was) plugged into knowing all the right people and could find sparky ideas.
ReplyDeleteInteresting to look at Pluto and Mulberry. Perhaps the spark for Pluto came from Mountbatten asking if a pipeline could be laid. A possibly crazy idea but it so happened that the oil industry had something suitable for land use and it was 'merely' necessary to wrap it up in an undersea telegraph cable jacket to make something workable.
For this and Mulberry and so many other things to work an initial spark and a rich industrial infrastructure was needed. The big shots from Burma Oil and Siemens (UK) had only to contact the right people and voila, it's done. Neither Pluto nor Mulberry were totally de novo projects and if you got the right people together then pre existing bits could come together.
Could we repeat WW2 from today's position? The theory was that it would all be over in 20 minutes, the reality is more like Ukraine/Russia. Not a cheering prospect.
"Could we repeat WW2 from today's position?"
DeleteWind turbines are very vulnerable things, as are solar panels. And how many oil refineries do we know have? 4?
We'd be buggered in a fortnight.
repeat WW2? Implausible, on several grounds. (Try setting up a conscript army today ... would fail on several grounds)
ReplyDeleteNot even sure we'd be able to manage the feats of rapidly-executed ingenuity we managed in 1982 for the Falklands - and certainly not the fleet we mustered
We're into surrender mode long before the Killer Weapon of, errr, economic sanctions have the desired effect
Our parlous state is well known, but what to do about it?
ReplyDeleteWe cannot realistically turn every young person into a best selling author - creating 1 million J K Rowlings is not a winning strategy nor is it likely that a boost to the number of Banksies will help much. Creatives don't scale.
We might consider turning North of Watford into a new industrial zone. Set wages at a bowl of rice/day and public housing rents to match. Corresponding laxness of H&S and planning rules to encourage cheap cars and cheap missile production. Tough luck on existing householders - turn all into HMOs. A whacking great tax on the southerners too.
Copy the Israelis at their own industrial game - guns, ammo, mil and spy gear, all products the Graun disapproves of - but forget the oranges. Forment discontent in the world to ensure a good market (there's a use for Mandelson).
Sorry, peace, love and lava bread won't hack it, nastiness sells.
@ND - I didn't mean to suggest only sticking to the toolbox, I should have maybe phrased it better.
ReplyDeleteNothing wrong with finding a nail, sans hammer, and making the connection between a screwdriver handle and the force needed to do the nailing.
It's when you get the whiteboards out and spend 3 weeks planning out various ways to tackle the nail, and everyone keeps walking past the hammer laid on the windowsill, I take issue with.
OT, but the Charlie Kirk murder is the gift that keeps on giving.
ReplyDeleteTrump's picks for the FBI, based on loyalty, are proving to be about as useful as expected. We have an arrest! Wait, we don't! Wait, we do! Wait, we don't! The Marx Brothers could barely do better.
Then we've had lots of po-faced "killed for freedom of speech" comments, perhaps forgetting several of his speeches were around that gun crimes and murders were an acceptable price to pay for the Second. Not that often we get to see someone get the sharp end of their beliefs.
"not that often we get to see someone get the sharp end of their beliefs"
ReplyDeleteNot really true, it's just that it doesn't make the national news. Here's an example.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/homeless-man-murder-hammersmith-b1244520.html
"A homeless man has admitted battering a woman to death with a mallet days after she took him in."
The poor girl must have been opening the Evening Standard at the entertainment page for the last ten years.
Ah yes. '“I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights,” he said.'
ReplyDeleteNot a hypocrite, then.
@ Caeser Hēméra
ReplyDeleteGun crimes and murders are an acceptable price for the US 2nd Amendment - Charlie Kirk is correct.
"Guns don't kill people, people kill people" as widely evidenced by the knife crime epidemic in Londonistan where aspiring architects, brain surgeons and drill MCs are removed from the gene pool each day.
To have freedom you should be allowed to do anything that doesn't cause a harm to others. If you are going to ban inanimate objects, then you don't have freedom.
@ Caeser Hēméra - pretty much everyone in the UK thinks that road deaths, tragic as they are, are the price we pay for being able to drive freely, but that doesn't make it OK to snark at someone killed in a car crash.
ReplyDeleteRooftop voting seems built into the constitution over there. Easy to do (even seems allowed) but post operational planning needs more attention. If you drive at 170mph you can't expect much sympathy when you run out of road.
ReplyDeleteI see Mandy wants a big payout, perhaps we would do well to sack Starmer for incompetence hiring him. Then we might get rid of two tiresome failures cheaply.
Would be interested to learn where you gun-law libertarian's actually choose to live, seeing as freedom to own guns is so high up your list of basic Human Rights. Do you keep tigers in your back yard, too, or is that perhaps illegal where you live? Obviously some Americans do indeed choose to live where they have max access to assault rifles but I'm asking about you, Matt.
ReplyDeleteParallel with road traffic accidents? Not really, because they'll be a feature of almost wherever you choose to live on the planet.