The Prince of Darness Has Returned

Peter Mandelson is to return to government. I know this won't mean anything to anyone outside Britain, or at least Europe, but it's quite astonishing news. The man is one of the most universally disliked politicians on earth. He was thrown out of the Blair cabinet twice, and then given an EU commissioner post. Now Brown is taking him back. He isn't an MP though, so they have to give him a seat in the LOrds to do it. As if that wasn't enough, it was widely thought that Brown and Mandelson hated each other. Almost everyone else does. Prescott disliked him so much he even gave up trying to hide it while he was in cabinet.

This is madness on so many levels, I don't know where to start. Mandelson was at one time hailed (by his own party) as a hero for being the architect of New Labour. But New Labour is hardly fashionable now. He's more likely to be blamed for it than revered. It emerged a few years ago that he was a closet homosexual. No one cared that he was gay, but somehow the fact that he had tried to hide it went against him. I remember Matthew Parris 'accidentally' outing him on live tv. Jeremy Paxman was conducting the interview and was utterly floored by it. Parris is also gay and clearly hated Mandelson.

Matthew Parris is to me something of a hero after saying this of Tony Blair:

I believe Tony Blair is an out-and-out rascal, terminally untrustworthy and close to being unhinged. I said from the start that there was something wrong in his head, and each passing year convinces me more strongly that this man is a pathological confidence-trickster. To the extent that he ever believes what he says, he is delusional. To the extent that he does not, he is an actor whose first invention — himself — has been his only interesting role.

I wish I had written that.

Anyway, there is a lot of speculation as to what the re-hiring of Mandelson means. Most papers are simply calling Brown a nutter, but Nick Robinson of the BBC, as usual, has a different angle. He claims that Mandelson has teamed up with Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell, and that they have come to drag Gordon Brown's knackers out of the fire; the four horsemen of the Labour Apocalypse. Surely the public won't fall for it twice, will they? No, they can't. Labour has just slipped another two points in the polls, which puts them 12% behind the Tories. And that was a poll for the Guardian.

It seems that the cow in the Home Office is slightly upset this morning after the new London Mayor elbowed her Police Commissioner out of office. She has suggested, in fairly aggressive tones, that Mad Boris did not go through official channels to remove bottom feeding scum, Ian Blair. She says the MPA has to come to her if they want the chief removed. I don't think she has a case. Boris fronts the MPA and told Blair that the MPA would go to the cow in the Home Office with a vote of no confidence, or he could resign. He resigned. Sounds like official channels to me.