I’ve just returned from a fascinating hour and a half breakfast with Peter Mandelson to talk about his new book The Third Man. From a professional point of view it was a great blogger relations initiative by publishers Harper Collins to invite a small number of ‘progressive’ (the words of their spokesperson) bloggers to a breakfast briefing where we were given exclusive access to some of the original source material from Peter’s book. Harper Collins won’t be giving these archive papers to mainstream media until Monday when they release the second wave of papers.

What I’ve received are copies of hand-written notes from and to Peter dating from between 1987 to 1997. I have studied them all in-depth yet, but the one I found most immediately of interest to me personally was Peter’s notes to Tony Blair about his thoughts on Clause IV.

For me this was a seminal moment for the Labour Party, when it threw off the shackles of dogma and returned to the true values and philosophies of its founding fathers and mothers. Personally, it was also the first time I became active in the Party beyond a purely personal level. I believed passionately in a new Clause IV that more truthfully reflected what the Party was really about. I campaigned hard, talking to members and going to speak at branch meetings and constituencies across the region to help convince members of the need for change.

I’ve uploaded the whole document, but have highlighted three of Peter’s notes:

“In para 1 I do not like ‘solidarity, liberty and equality’ – very old fashioned mantra. I do like ‘rights and responsibilities’, even ‘duty to others’.

"In para 2 ’in the hands of the many…’ sounds better but is it what we mean? Don’t we mean all? “… rather than birth” at end sounds a bit funny.”

“Remember this Constitution – suitably poetic and Jerusalem-like – is meant to get ordinary people to understand easily what we’re about + to vote for us”

Peter Mandelson’s note to Tony Blair on the new Clause IV

I’m going to do two other posts on this. The next will be a more public relations focussed one and look at how Harper Collins did the blogger relations, which had some brilliant elements to it, but also elements that I think won’t work in terms of generating positive coverage, but might contribute to generating more overall ‘buzz’.

The second post will be an actual proper book review. But it’s a big book and I’m quite busy, so that might take a while! I’ve just finished the second chapter so far and my recommendation would definitely be – read it! Yes, there are legitimate questions to ask about if this is the right time and what damage it does to the Labour Party, but if it was going to be published then now’s as good a time as any. And the Labour Party should be looking forward. If some people have behaved as they shouldn’t in the past then they’ve got to live with the consequences of their actions, justify them or apologise for them. Then we can all move and get on with re-connecting and defeating the Tory Lib Dem coalition.

I’ll also upload the rest of the documents, although I’ll probably be beaten to it as I can’t do it at the moment as the East Coast train wifi and my T-mobile signal are both too flaky (this post should have uploaded over an hour ago!)

And as requested by Peter, here is the Amazon link (disclaimer – it’s an affiliate link so I’ll probably get tuppence if you buy it from here – please do my three-year old daughter is growing out of her clothes!)

The Third Man: Life at the Heart of New Labour

Haven’t had time to read Lord Mandelson’s weighty tome yet, but have had a quick glance in the index to tot up how many pages each of the Labour leadership contenders get mentioned on:

Diane Abbott 0 – not a single reference to Dianne.

Ed Balls 41 – yep Ed features pretty big.

Andy Burnham 1 – Andy being brave enough to defend Gordon after Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt’s infamous letter.

David Miliband 48 – but out in front is Miliband major.

Ed Miliband 11 – while Miliband minor gets fewer mentions.

The Third Man: Life at the Heart of New Labour

I’m looking forward to tonight’s Personal Democracy Forum General Election 2010 – Action Replay at the Royal Society of the Arts.

Speakers include two the leading political strategists in the USA – Mindy Finn and Joe Trippi, along with PDF’s founder Andrew Rasiej. From the UK there is Stella Creasy MP, Labour’s new MP in Walthamstow and the senior strategists behind the online campaigns from the three main parties: Labour’s Mark Hanson, (Deputy MD of Wolfstar and Labour new media strategist), Conservative’s Craig Elder (Online Communities Editor at the Conservative Party) and the Liberal Democrat’s Mark Pack (Head of Digital at Mandate Communications and co-editor Lib Dem Voice www.LibDemVoice.org). There’s also Harry Cole (editor of ToryBear.com), Anthony Painter (commentator and journalist), Alberto Nardelli (creator of Tweetminster) and Prospect Magazine’s James Crabtree.

The event will be chaired by Charlie Beckett the Director of POLIS.

The organisers say It’s seriously oversubscribed, even with a waiting list and overflow room. If you aren’t on the guest list you can still follow it at Amplified (there will be live streaming of the event and I presume the link will appear here.)

The hash tag to follow it on Twitter is #pdfge2010.

If you’re just interested in business, PR or social media then don’t read this post on my politics blog.

It looks like all reporting of new media innovation in the election campaign by the MSM is now being seen through the same yellow prism of all their other reporting i.e. look for things that make the Liberal Democrats look good/bad and get it in the paper. In the last week we’ve seen breathless reporting of increased searches for ‘Nick Clegg’, increased online donations to the Lib Dems and a boost in members of the Lib Dem Facebook group. That’s in between the Daily Mail stories on Nazis and his parentage!

All this is interesting to a point but is a function of a wider political story that’s reflected in popularity indicators online. It tells us nothing about how clever the Lib Dems are/are not being online and what is working. Lots of PR/social media commentators are bemoaning the fact it isn’t really an internet election and that none of the parties are ‘engaging’ or ‘innovating’ properly online. It’s not as good as Obama they say.

But in Labour’s case they’re nearly all missing the point, just as most of them miss the point about Obama’s campaign.

The ‘sexy’ stuff is largely under the hood. And it’s working. Really well. And business and not-for-profit organisations can learn from it.

Labour recently launched an iPhone app. The initial version was all designed using feedback from its most active online campaigners as the objective on this and everything else Labour is doing in the new media campaign is to produce real world outcomes. That’s why the whole iPhone app was packed with functionality that enabled/motivated them to get out on the doorstep, make phone calls and attending events.

A second wave was launched last week following further requests from the coalface. The learning is if you want to mobilise large numbers of people in a network to do things for you then you need to involve them. Labour has introduced a lot of innovations to mobilise and motivate their network; involving them in designing products, decision making and briefing them on content and news. This is one such example and it’s contributed to some extremely strong success measures. The irreverent and hugely popular website, PopBitch has rated Labour’s iPhone app the most successful out of the main parties in this area.

But also look at the response out in the real world. At a time when you could argue that it’s harder to get people out slogging and making the case for Labour, new media is being used as a motivator, an intelligence tool and a way of helping people share a message with their contacts. Look at the numbers from week one of the campaign: approximately 300,000 a week versus approx. 100,000 a week in 2005, 60,000 phone calls made through the virtual phonebank tool and the number of people sharing the manifesto was also extremely high i.e 60,000 people viewed the manifesto online and 50,000 downloaded the PDF version. Compare this with 8,000 in 2005 going to buy the old paper version.

These figures show that it’s working and the incentive is there to modify it to go much further and deeper.

Tonight I went along to my very first Bootlaw event – and it was brilliant. Danvers Baillieu and Barry Vitou ran a great session on ‘Social Media Attacks’. If you’ve never been to a Bootlaw session I’d highly recommend you do.

In business some people think it’s a big taboo to talk too much about politics or religion, I can’t comment on religion, but I can on politics. Anyone who reads either my business blog or my politics blog won’t be any doubt what my politics are. I’m a long-standing member of the Labour Party and believe passionately that Labour is not only best for the people of the UK, but also for UK business plc.

Some people think that’s dangerous, that I’ve instantly alienated potential clients who are Tories or Lib Dem. I’d humbly like to disagree.

Anyone who knows Danvers or Barry will know they are die-hard Tories. We’re poles apart, never the twain shall meet. Actually, no.  I’ve got far more respect for Danvers and Barry because they are Tories, than if they weren’t interested in politics.

You see, what it tells me is they’ve got passion. They care. They care about more than themselves. They care about what’s best for Britain. I admire that, because that’s me. I happen to think on politics they are deluded, no doubt they think similar of me.

But caring is important. I don’t just care passionately about what’s best for Britain – I care about my clients. I genuinely worry about what’s best for them. And I think Danvers and Barry care about their clients as much as I care about mine.

There are dozens of public relations consultants and solicitors who’ve got brilliant technical skills. But how many would you trust to go the extra mile? Even though I don’t know Danvers and Barry that well I’d trust them to go that extra mile. That’s because of their politics I’ve seen they’ve got enthusiasm and passion – they care.

So no, I don’t think business and politics don’t mix. On the contrary it’s a massive positive. Those that are active in politics, respect others who are, even if they disagree with them. Those that aren’t interested in politics, probably won’t care what you do.

This evening I’m at at Leaders’ Debate party with Eddie Izzard and Hilary Benn. As usual I’ll be tweeting furiously during the debate and afterwards I plan to do some immediate live video streaming interviews.

You can watch them here on my Qik Live Channel:

I’ll be using a Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 for the live video streaming and for reasons of transparency I’ve got to remind you that Sony Ericsson is a client of my company Wolfstar. For the technically minded amongst you it’s a Android phone, and IMHO (in my humble opinion the best available!)

Iain Dale and Total Politics magazine have released a cracking YouTube video of Bucks Fizz’s Eurovison winner ‘Making Your Mind Up’ to encourage people to vote.

It features a host of famous political figures and celebrities including Alastair Campbell, Ann Widdicombe, Nigel Farage, Chris Mullin, Phil Willis, Peter Tatchell, Lynne Featherstone, all-party band MP4 and Anne Diamond.

Lots of political bloggers also make an appearance, my personal favourite has to be Guido Fawkes having his skirt whipped off!

Three of the original Bucks Fizz also appear, with Iain Dale himself making up the quartet.

Remember today’s the last day to register to vote. You can download a form at About My Vote and then you need to hand-deliver it to your local elections office (probably in the Civic Hall or Town Hall, depending on which local council area you live in.) If you’re at work ask your boss for a long lunch hour or if you can leave early. It’s essential to vote.

Remember “If you don’t vote, you can’t complain.”

The Telegraph has a great tool that enables you answer a quick quiz to assess your views on a wide range of different policies and then tells you how closely your views match those of the different political parties. It even enables you to embed it on your own website, which is what I’ve done here.

Its focus on policy is a brilliant antidote to the ridiculous focus on personalities and leaders’ wives that is filling far too much of the media at the moment.