Top Blair Aide Resigns Cabinet Post LONDON (AP) -- Peter Mandelson, the master strategist behind Prime Minister Tony Blair's 1997 election win, resigned from the Cabinet on Wednesday following questions about a big loan from a colleague. Mandelson was instrumental in reviving a Labor Party battered into irrelevance in the 1980s by internal feuding and unpopular policies. His departure left a little mud sticking to a government that prided itself on high standards. Mandelson, 45, resigned as secretary for trade and industry a day after The Guardian newspaper disclosed that he had received a home loan of $625,000 in 1996 from fellow legislator Geoffrey Robinson. Mandelson hadn't told Blair about that until last week, and he hadn't told his department when it started investigating some of Robinson's business interests. Hours after Mandelson stepped down, Robinson, 50, resigned as paymaster general at the Treasury. ``We are all going to sleep easier because if it had carried on festering horrendously over Christmas, the government would have suffered,'' said Rhodri Morgan, a Labor lawmaker from Wales. However, The Guardian said questions were now being raised about Robinson's financial support for Gordon Brown, the Treasury chief, before last year's election. The Treasury refused Tuesday to answer questions on that issue, The Guardian said. Robinson apologized to the House of Commons last month for failing to disclose some of his financial interests, including a stake in an offshore trust. Mandelson protested that he had not transgressed Blair's code of conduct, but the case produced hostile headlines Wednesday. The Sun, the largest- circulation tabloid, quoted Blair's past calls for Labor to be ``purer than pure,'' and headlined: ``So how the hell can Mandy stay?'' ``I should not, with all candor, have entered into the arrangement,'' Mandelson said in a resignation letter to Blair. ``I should, having done so, have told you and other colleagues whose advice I value.'' Mandelson remains in Parliament and many expect him to return to prominence after a period of penitence on the backbenches. Stephen Byers, already in the Cabinet as chief secretary to the Treasury, will replace Mandelson, Blair's office said. Defending himself on Tuesday, Mandelson described himself and Robinson as ``fairly publicity-friendly, controversial, fairly exotic personalities.'' Robinson was controversial because of the way he used his wealth, and sheltered it from taxes; Mandelson because of his power and his closeness to Blair. Mandelson gave Labor a new red rose symbol in the 1980s, and he masterminded the lavish Millennium Dome now rising in Greenwich that symbolizes Blair's aspirations for Britain's future. There was a media uproar last month when a columnist claimed on television that Mandelson was gay. The claim was hardly new, but the BBC's order to its reporters to not repeat it insured that it was widely reported everywhere else. Labor has stumbled before on money matters. After Blair backed an exemption for Formula One racing from a proposed European ban on tobacco advertising in sports, it was disclosed that Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone gave the party $1.7 million before the election. Labor refunded his contribution. Derek Draper, a former sidekick of Mandelson, was fired from a lobbying firm after journalists caught him boasting that he could offer his paying clients access to powerful figures in government. Mandelson was born to politics. His grandfather, Herbert Morrison, was a member of Winston Churchill's wartime Cabinet and briefly foreign secretary under Labor Prime Minister Clement Attlee. Mandelson won a seat in the House of Commons in 1992, and was promoted to the Cabinet earlier this year.
