This Labour government, on the very edge of an election, is not brimming with sleaze. The desperate Tory press are trying to libel it as fast as possible, digging up any story, however thin and implausible, in the hope that something will stick. But Tony Blair's administration remains - apart from a very few people operating at the margins of propriety - a decent one, of honest men and women.
So what has gone wrong - for something has? I believe this lot have been more traditional than sleazy. Like earlier Labour governments and oppositions, they have been riven by ancient blood-feuds and ideological disputes. Take the Mandelson affair. He does like swanking around with the rich. He did get close to the Hindujas while soliciting sponsorship for the doomed Dome. The Hammond report is gentle on him, as it is on everyone else.
But he failed to be supported because his colleagues see him as an ideological plotter. What's more, he represents, more than any other minister, the concessions and compromises that are new Labour.
One minister delighted in reminding me recently that Peter Mandelson's grandfather Herbert Morrison was an inveterate plotter, too. Hark back to the extraordinary events of 26 and 27 July 1945 when Labour had just won its first landslide victory.
A triumphant Clement Attlee was preparing for government when Morrison launched a last-minute plot to ditch him. It was foiled only when Ernie Bevin urged Attlee to drive straight to the Palace in the family car, where he was duly made prime minister. Morrison's plotting ran out of time, but some never forgave his treachery.
The point is that the Mandelson affair is not something new and strange, but comes from deep within Labour's folk memory. The question now being asked at Westminster is: "Is Mandelson worth it - does his undoubted genius at campaigning make up for the trouble he brings?"
Mandelson does have ministerial and other Labour friends. Those close to the coalface of the election campaign last time round are mourning his departure. In terms of breadth of vision, eye for detail, coolness under fire, Mandelson, it is said, cannot be equalled. What's more, he simply lived and breathed politics, working 24-hour days, seven days a week - something that few others, with the possible exception of Gordon Brown, are prepared to do.
And yet, there's no doubt that Mandelson has contributed to the aura of sleaze and arrogance that laps around the edges of this administration. The controversy over his home loan, his links with the Hinduja brothers, now an involvement with the arms dealer Wafic Said: the drip upon drip of stories about him has damaged the government, and for this reason alone he should, as he promised, try to discover a more normal life for himself - outside politics.
But what about the rest of them? What wider lessons are there in the recent controversies?
All the present allegations against the government - from the Hindujas' passports to Robin Cook's alleged leak of a select committee report to the row over planning permission for an Oxford college - seem about as wicked as taking delivery of a free ginger biscuit at a Cabinet coffee morning when compared to what went on under the last government.
There are no brown envelopes stuffed with banknotes in return for Commons questions; no one is travelling abroad actively seeking donations for the Labour Party from dodgy regimes; and this government has put a cap on the amount of money parties can spend during elections.
Yet Labour has got a few very basic things badly wrong. First, no minister should be in the position of soliciting or needing anything from a private individual. Government money comes from the tax system; the more there are complex private deals negotiated on the sidelines, the more there is room for influence-peddling and suspicion. The Dome was an awful, unmistakable warning. Its lesson must be learnt.
Second, Labour has failed to understand and respect the proper division between the executive and parliament. It is just not good enough for Keith Vaz to refuse to answer questions of the privileges committee or the standards commissioner - though it was somehow typical of the way that MPs' committees are viewed. Ministers' obsession with getting their message out in "friendly" newspapers is becoming profoundly worrying to anyone who cares about full parliamentary democracy. The empty silence of the Commons so much of the time is a real rebuke to new Labour.
Third, the whips' office needs to be completely revamped to keep a much greater check on what MPs are getting up to. Rather than a disciplinarian, "you vote when we tell you" office, it should resemble more a personnel department. That way, when MPs are spending time with the wrong people, are in personal or financial difficulty, or feel their ambition frustrated, there would be some guidance for them. Both Labour and Tory MPs agree that the Tory whips carry out this function far more successfully, scooping up many an embarrassment before it leaks to the press.
That's a very traditional prescription: less public/private dealing on the edges, more respect for parliament, better whips. But that is what is needed. If Labour is to get through a second term without being smeared and libelled to destruction, it needs to make sure that proper safeguards are in place, and that they are respected.
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