Michael Dugher has been the Labour MP for Barnsley East since 2010, but his experience in British politics reaches much further back. He worked at 10 Downing Street as the Chief Political Spokesman for Gordon Brown, as well as an adviser to the Department of Transport, Local Government and Regional Affairs and Ministry of Defence, Leader of the House of Commons and the Government Chief Whip. In 2010 he became the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition, before joining the Shadow Cabinet in 2011 without portfolio. He is now responsible for coordinating attacks between departments on the government.

We arrived at Portcullis House for the interview and the suits took us up to his office. This is located in the old Scotland Yard building, down the road from the Palace of Westminster: thousands of interrogations must have taken place here, but we didn’t aim to follow their lead. Instead, we wanted to have a conversation, and yet still ask robust and challenging questions.  As we sat down, Mr Dugher asked his aide for a KitKat and a cup of tea- shows where your first class degree in politics can get you. As he sat down and started eating his chocolate, we asked him about the polls…

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Beforehand the queue twisted around the corner of Catz’s lecture theatre, and familiar (and not so familiar) faces appeared well before the scheduled starting time. Mandelson attracted a range of Oxford students: the room was full to bursting with an eager congregation; the party faithful, the generally intrigued, and even a smattering of card-carrying Tories were all in attendance.

Of all the big names in British politics, this was one man who appealed, in one way or another, to the many, not the few. A career at once encompassing power, glamour and scandal has left behind a man carefully prepared for scrutiny, and his slick handling of the media has been both mocked and envied in equal measure. This was not your average Westminster visitor.

Lord Mandelson currently heads up the Department for Business, Skills and Innovation, a position requiring a bizarre and demanding mix of roles. His speech reflected this unusual blend, and unsurprisingly also touched on the upcoming election and the Conservatives under David Cameron.

He grudgingly conceded that Cameron has a “less disagreeable public personality than his predecessors”, but dismissed any arguments that this would be a deciding factor in next year’s election. “I don’t think that likeability and personality are the only, or even dominant, factors in what makes up people’s judgement.” He also raised the point that the public feeling for the Tories is one of acceptance, rather than passion. He argued that the wave of support on which Blair sailed into office in 1997 was absent for Cameron, because “people don’t know, or don’t believe, that the Conservative Party has really changed.”

Mandelson focused on Cameron’s conference speech, teasing out the ideological dividing line on which he believes the next election will be fought. While Cameron rejected the concept of big government, Mandelson challenged his assumptions, and emphasised his support for “a government big and strong enough to do the heavy lifting”. He added that the next general election would be a significant milestone in British politics, saying, “The next general election is going to be the biggest change general election in a decade.”

OULC’s Jamie Susskind and Ben Lyons caught up with Mandelson after the speech for a few questions. On the subject of unpaid internships, Mandelson was characteristically vague about his opinion, offering the explanation “what you can afford is going to be constrained by the number of people you want to have access to those placements.”

Following the rather odd question posed to Alastair Campbell the week before on what the two of them would get up to if stranded alone together on a desert island, Lyons asked Mandelson what he thought of the prospect. He pondered the idea, and concluded that they would probably spend their time working out how to get off it.

He added that if he was forced to take a member of the Cabinet to Lyons’s hypothetical island, it would probably be “one of the Milibands”, because “they are both friends of mine, and I enjoy their company”.

He earnestly finished by commenting, “Don’t believe the cynicism of the media, believe in yourself, and your convictions”, and on that note, ‘Things can only get better’ began to play in the background, and all were transported to a happy day twelve years past, in the time where snappy sound-bites were enough to get the nation, and their votes, on side. Or perhaps we imagined that.

Held every Autumn, Labour’s Annual Conference is one of the largest and most high profile political events in Europe. Led by the National Executive Committee, it is an important forum for debating resolutions which are voted on by delegates from Constituency Labour Parties, affiliated trade unions and socialist societies seeking to shape Labour’s vision for Britain.

More than 12,000 politically engaged delegates and visitors also come to conference for the wider experiences available.