The proud scourge of British governments past, the miners' union leader, Mr Arthur Scargill, still has a bust of Vladimir Lenin in his office. He also has a new target in his sights.
His old enemy was former Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher, who never budged during the 1980s coal strikes.
Now Mr Scargill has declared war on the Labour Party's Mr Peter Mandelson, running for his parliamentary seat representing the north-east city of Hartlepool.
Ever the unreconstructed socialist, Mr Scargill (63) can not forgive Mr Mandelson for helping Mr Blair move the left-wing Labour party towards the centre while it was in opposition.
Mr Blair went on to become Prime Minister in a landslide election victory four years ago. Mr Mandelson was his key ally, and is still said to have Mr Blair's ear.
But Mr Scargill says they've forgotten the workers.
"Mandelson was wrong and is wrong. New Labour has been a disaster for Britain," he said in an interview.
He quit the party in disgust in the mid-1990s after Labour jettisoned its commitment to state ownership, and founded the Socialist Labour Party, on whose ticket he will stand for parliament. But he is hardly the only one aiming for Mr Mandelson.
There's also a former Labour Party press officer, a boxing promoter, and a lawyer. Mr Mandelson is surrounded by electoral challengers, all hoping his recent political woes have weakened him enough for one of them to topple him from office.
A Hartlepool Mail poll just after Mr Mandelson's second resignation found most locals thought he should step down as MP.
But that was before an investigation cleared him of wrongdoing. Now his friends insist Hartlepudlians will back him, saving Mr Blair another major embarrassment over his fallen friend.
The city of 90,000 with its crumbling steel and shipbuilding industries has long formed part of Labour's "heartlands". Blair's constituency is in Sedgefield to the west, and several other cabinet members have "safe" seats nearby. Mr Mandelson, Hartlepool's MP since 1992, won reelection by a handsome majority of 17,500 in the 1997 Labour landslide. But many locals wonder why this high-profile representation in London has not stemmed the loss of jobs from the region at the bottom of the heap in employment and economic output.