Mandelson: A Homosexual History - Episode 6

Happy pride! Gather around, we've got a story to tell! For Stonewall weekend, a special treat: writer, critic, and journalist Cameron Cook joins Ben to talk about the one and only Liza through the stories of the bad (and good) gays in her life, from her father Vincente Minnelli to her first husband Peter Allen to her diabolical fourth husband David Gest. Liza learned on her (and our) mother Judy Garland's knee how to survive by appealing to gay guys. Gay guys used Judy, then Liza to self-fashion. None of it is particularly healthy, and yet we love it so. Our main source for this episode was Liza's new memoir, Kids, Wait Til You Hear This!, and Cameron's newsletter Cooked, with monthly essays and regular music playlists for pop culture obsessives, can be found here. Support our work by subscribing to Extra Bad Gays on Patreon or Apple, and get an extra monthly episode!

Today we are reaching the next to last chapter––for now!––of the Mandelson story. Listen to the sixth and final episode now by subscribing to Extra Bad Gays on Patreon. As we are recording this, on 18th May 2026, the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, is facing a potential leadership challenge and a collapse in legitimacy following two major crises, both of these the responsibility of Peter Mandelson; one, directly, the other a consequence of the changes of which Mandelson has been the driving force of for almost 40 years. The first crisis is Starmer’s appointment of Mandelson as Ambassador to the United States, despite his having failed a Foreign Office vetting procedure, and the fallout of that once Mandelson was outed as a close long-term friend of the child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, to whom it’s alleged he passed sensitive government and financial information while in power. The other is the complete decimation of Labour in the recent local elections, and in elections for the Welsh and Scottish devolved assemblies, which saw the party lose close to 1500 local council seats and, in Wales, lose a century-long winning streak as the country’s largest party. In today’s episode we’ll talk about Mandelson’s journey from MP to peer to Ambassador, and we’ll also discuss how his enormous influence over that time, usually behind the scenes, has led to a Labour Party and indeed the two party system itself on the edge of total collapse.  

Peter Mandelson has been the definitive comeback kid of British politics, and it’s impossible to ever rule out his return. Listen to Episode Five right now and get Extra Bad Gays every month by subscribing on Patreon! Today, we will learn why he got that reputation as we look at Mandelson in power. The Millennium Dome, a Y2K fever dream! His public outing! A wider cultural shift in attitudes towards gay men, one which contributed to the idea that poofs were everywhere at the top of society! Resignations, and returns!    

This week, on Mandelson: A Homosexual History, we cover the 1992 UK election and the birth of New Labour. Subscribe on Patreon to support our work and stay a week ahead on this miniseries! If Huw's Margaret Thatcher wasn't enough to turn your stomach, try his John Major on for size. Neil Kinnock loses the 1992 election. John Smith becomes leader of the Labour Party, flanked by two feuding up-and-coming reformers named Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. Peter Mandelson buys a lovely home in Notting Hill with questionable financing, and sets himself to defeating Clause IV once and for all. The exciting but fundamentally reactionary Cool Britannia cultural moment helps us understand how tentative New Labour were about rocking the cultural boat. Their victory in 1997 was more about stasis than change.  

Subscribe on Patreon to hear Episode Three now, get our monthly Extra Bad Gays episodes, and stay a week ahead on the miniseries. Last week we looked at Mandelson’s early years, and his move from a flirtation with Marxism to being firmly on the right of the Labour Party. We also discussed the left-right split in the Labour Party, and how, in the 1980s, that became a full blown civil war. This week, it's time for the 1987 General Election, and for the paranoid homophobia of late-Eighties Britain: section 28, sleaze, AIDS panic, and tabloid hell.