Sourced

• Before this campaign started, it was said that I was facing political oblivion, my career in tatters, apparently never to be part of political life again. Well they underestimated Hartlepool and they underestimated me, because I am a fighter and not a quitter!

  My political opponents can have their pound of flesh, and they do, but they will not eat into of my beliefs, what I stand for and have done in politics. That is the inner steel in me.

  • Jason Beattie, Jon Hibbs, "Triumphant Mandelson hails new Labour victory", Scotsman, 8 June 2001, p. 5.
  • Acceptance speech after re-election as MP for Hartlepool in the 2001 General Election.

• No serious challenge on the Left exists to Third Way thinking anywhere in the world. This is hardly surprising as globalisation punishes hard any country that tries to run its economy by ignoring the realities of the market or prudent public finances. In this strictly narrow sense, and in the urgent need to remove rigidities and incorporate flexibility in capital, product and labour markets, we are all "Thatcherite" now.
  • "There's plenty of life in the 'new' Third Way yet", The Times, 10 June 2002, p. 16.