Tory-boy falls foul of Mandy
Well, Baron Mandelson of Foy and Hartlepool has wasted no time in bringing back the two characteristics of New Labour that he and his mentor Mr Tony Blair, epitomised so shamelessly: disdain for workers and adoration of the super-rich.
Oh yes: it also turns out that Mandy has been less than fully frank about his relationship with Oleg Deripaska, the Russian aluminium billionaire. Surprise, surprise…
And yet it is the hapless Tory-boy George Osborne who has come off the worse as a result of all this sucking-up to fabulously wealthy bankers and Russian oligarchs amongst the villas and yachts of Corfu. Part of the problem for Osborne, so it seems, is simply that he showed bad form in breaching the code of confidentiality that usually surrounds these gatherings and that sound chaps like Mandelson understand only too well.
But there’s a further aspect to it all that I hadn’t quite thought through until Alexander Chancellor spelled it out in today’s Graun; and it’s a pretty astonishing (though plainly true) point to make about the contrast between a Tory and a Labour Party member:
“Osborne was a fool to draw attention to his summer activities for their exposure was always going to do him more harm than it would Mandelson, who has always been open about his fondness for the high life. It is hard to think of a revelation about him that could now surprise us.”
sackcloth and ashes said,
October 25, 2008 at 9:53 pm
“Osborne was a fool to draw attention to his summer activities for their exposure was always going to do him more harm than it would Mandelson, who has always been open about his fondness for the high life. It is hard to think of a revelation about him that could now surprise us.”
OK Jim, I don’t disagree with this assessment of Mandelson. But does it not show something about the Tories that I still remember from the mid-1990s? Namely, their tendency to take a bung, lie about it, and be shameless about the consequences?
The only contrast between Labour and the Tories is that Mandelson’s behaviour is something to be ashamed of. For a Conservative, it’s an SOP.