Mandelan

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Mandelan

Mandelan.Portrait.jpg

Peter Mandelson / Charlie Whelan
Names Mandelan
Description Mutually assured destruction

News from Gordon's office, or the latest whisper about Mandelson, was grist to the mill which ground away happily, with Whelan gleefully cranking the handle.

Mandelan is a ship from the New Labour era. It pairs Peter Mandelson with Charlie Whelan, and is based primarily on the strong mutual hatred between the two men.

History[edit | edit source]

First Contact and Growing Animosity[edit | edit source]

When I invited him for tea in the Commons, his wide-boy manner put me off a bit.~ Peter on meeting Charlie

Both men have Communist roots from their youth, though Peter gave them up notably sooner and more readily than Charlie, who remains staunchly to the Left of New Labour. While Charlie worked briefly in the City, in which he developed a loathing for fat cats, Peter was in politics from a young age, briefly leaving to work in television. In the early nineties, when they were both close to Gordon Brown, Peter suggested to Gordon that Charlie would be an ideal candidate as spokesman, and in 1992, Charlie became spokesman to the Shadow Chancellor, where he was brought into a close Brownite circle alongside Ed Balls, Nick Brown and Sue Nye.

Grudgingly working together on the campaign trail

In 1994, after John Smith's death, there was a silent eruption between Gordon and Tony Blair, with the good friends becoming rivals for the leadership. While Gordon waited until after John's funeral to begin collecting his men for the campaign, Tony moved more quickly, luring Peter to support him. This was seen by Gordon and Charlie as treachery of the very worst kind, and Charlie immediately began to spin against Peter, something that Peter said made him "despair" as he realised the tactics that his old friend, Gordon, was ready to use against him and Tony.

While Tony won the leadership and Gordon grudgingly settled as Shadow Chancellor, Charlie remained as Gordon's spokesman while Peter was taken into Tony's inner circle. Charlie resented the rightwards shift in the Party more so than Gordon did, and scapegoated Peter, who he had developed a deep hatred for since the betrayal over the Labour leadership. They antagonised each other in meetings, which was a source of frustration for everybody else involved; "in one particularly ugly scene, Mandelson and Whelan slung accusations at each other about who had spun the most of the Budget."[1]

Resignations[edit | edit source]

When Labour was in office, Charlie's profile was raised as spokesman to the Chancellor, while Peter was made Minister Without Portfolio and then in 1998, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. They continued to disagree, and Charlie's hatred of Peter became "intense". In 1998, he began to openly spin against Peter to the media, saying that he had made a "dog's dinner" of his job. This was the last straw, and Peter and Alastair Campbell went to Gordon, demanding that he fire Charlie. Gordon answered in typically vague terms, but made no move to remove Charlie.

Meanwhile, Gordon had ordered that Charlie do "anything it takes" to get rid of Peter from Government. Charlie uncovered the revelation that Peter had accepted an interest-free loan from Geoffrey Robinson, a millionaire Brownite MP, to buy his house in Notting Hill, and hadn't declared the loan in his register of interests. Charlie recruited Paul Routledge, a Mirror hack and former comrade of Charlie who shared the intensity of Charlie's hatred for Peter. He agreed to write an unauthorised biography.

The biography, Mandy, was disreputable, switching between damning Peter for his Communist links as a youth and then his right-wingism in the Labour Party. It talked at length and in a derogatory manner about Peter's sexual identity, his sexual partners and included a dubious claim of child sexual abuse from a scout leader while Peter was a boy scout. But most prominently, the book revealed that Peter had taken this undeclared, interest-free loan from the Paymaster General.

Before the book could be published and Routledge cash in on the scandal, the story was leaked and exploded in the public eye. Peter was blasted universally by the media, much to Charlie's glee. He struggled for his job, but was the only one. He was met with anger from Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell and was forced to resign on the 23rd December 1998. When Charlie was revealed as the source of the leak, he was quietly ushered out of his job in January. He revels in the knowledge that he was responsible for Peter's political execution and makes no effort to deny it.

Post-1998[edit | edit source]

Santa brings naughty boys mortgage scandals

Charlie carved out a career in the media while Peter rebuilt his political career, only to have it shattered again. In 2001, Charlie made the claim that Peter had travelled to Brazil with his partner, Reinaldo, and taken part in a voodoo ceremony with Zenzhino, a Camdomble priest, in which a chicken was sacrificed and a curse put on Charlie to "stop him doing bad things to my friend Peter".

After Peter's third appointment to Cabinet, the two men found themselves having to work side-by-side as Charlie was "back on the team" and involved regularly in meetings at Number Ten, though their relationship was just as strained as before. Charlie has claimed that Peter banned him from Labour HQ during the 2010 general election, and has said that Peter is single-handedly responsible for the defeat.

Fanon[edit | edit source]

In Culture[edit | edit source]

Paul Rhys and Dexter Fletcher in The Deal

Charlie and Peter appeared together in The Deal, shown as having a deep animosity towards each other. Charlie refers to Peter as "you fucker" and remarks "that man smells of vanilla", a comment which now has something of a fan following.

The Meme[edit | edit source]

Mandelan is generally portrayed as a temperamental relationship with little or no tenderness, often a relationship of sexual convenience. Reflecting their determination to go about ruining each other, dub-con, non-con or other forms of humiliation regularly feature.

A prominent Mandelan trope involves Charlie and Peter engaging hatesex but finding instead that are shamefully aroused, only angering them further. In "The Political Living", Peter is left in Gordon's office for Charlie to play with before the 2001 election results come in. They have a fight, but Peter is eventually held down and raped by Charlie.

AUs[edit | edit source]

They enjoy a brief, fluffy moment in the NuLab zookeepers!AU, when Charlie rescues Peter from a tarantula. In the Snake!Peter universe, Peter takes revenge on Charlie, constricting him until he faints from lack of oxygen and biting him in a place that Charlie didn't want to be bitten.

References[edit | edit source]

  1. Rawnsley, Andrew (2000). Servants of the People. Penguin UK.