When Peter Mandelson was thinking of hiring Derek Draper as a research assistant in 1992, he called a well-placed Labour colleague for a reference. He was advised that his young candidate was “rough, tough and ruthless”. The description was meant to be discouraging, but Draper nevertheless got the job and thus secured his foot on a ladder that would give him a privileged view of the political operation that became Tony Blair’s New Labour government.
For just over a decade, Draper, who has died aged 56 after a long period suffering the effects of Covid, was one of the most familiar figures behind the scenes at the interface between journalism and politics in the bars at Westminster, in the dining rooms of Pall Mall and among the cushioned comforts of the plusher Soho clubs. But his apparently enviable career as a key adviser and then, from 1996, as a political lobbyist became instead, as a result of hubris, what more closely resembled a cautionary tale.
