(no subject)

Who would have thought that, of all people, it would be Peter Mandelson who would wind up implicated in a minor scandal involving illicit favours for the super-rich? What kind of crazy, topsy-turvy world has this become? We’re through the looking-glass here, people.

Oh all right, it was as predictable as sunrise, but what did startle me was the swiftness with which his latest appointment as minister was overshadowed by his alleged dodgy dealings. I love the comic timing of it: the European Commission investigates whether Mandelson might have done the Russian schmillionaire a favour when working on trade rules in 2005; he tells it he never met the man till 2006; the commission says “Righto, then you didn’t do anything wrong”; and then almost immediately he has to admit he actually met him in 2004—although he can understand how people had “formed the impression” that he met him in 2006. Also, he hadn’t just popped on board the guy’s yacht for a couple of drinks but was actually staying on it as a guest.

Ultimately, then, even if he truly didn’t intervene to make life easier for someone fabulously well-off—just like he “didn’t” do anything to smooth the way for the Hinduja brothers’ passport application—we are left with the pitiable sight of a man whose overriding instinct is to cling baby-lemur-like to the hide of the wealthy. Like Tony Blair, he seems be a kind of social-climbing hermit crab, forever making other people’s yachts and villas his temporary home.^[1] Not for nothing did he assure businessmen that his party was “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”. (I really can’t forgive him for that phrase. No-one should have to picture Peter Mandelson in a state of being “intensely relaxed”, ever.) His sleazy, spivvy moustache may have been obliterated a lifetime ago, but it lives on in his heart.



Incidentally, it’s only fair in the interests of balance that I draw your attention to this short article encapsulating the behaviour of our delightful, egalitarian probable next Chancellor of the Exchequer, self-declared “despicable cvnt”^[2] George Osborne.


^[1] Please feel free to add any more suitable animals that Lord Mandelson can be readily compared to.

^[2] All right, all right, not exactly “self-declared”. But he did say it.