The Sunday Times has a delicious story about Peter Mandelson trying to force Gordon Brown into making him Foreign Secretary. The thing with stories like this is that they can never be proved - until they happen. But this one has the ring of truth about it.
What Jonathan Oliver and Isabel Oakeshott don't speculate on is the reaction of David Miliband to such a suggestion. Might it provide him with a third opportunity to prove that he does indeed possess a political backbone?
As nice, talented, friendly and likable a chap as David Milliband is...we all know he just doesn't have the ruthless streak to be one of the big boys...which is a shame. Would've been a good fight.
ReplyDelete'A well placed No 10 insider said: ... Mandelson is known to...The Sunday Times understands that...According to insiders...In a development known to just a handful of cabinet ministers... said the high level source...Mandelson is said to believe that...The No 10 source said...Neither Miliband nor Alistair Darling, the chancellor, is thought to know of...His campaign for a foreign affairs role suggests he may now be..."
ReplyDeleteProof? What more do you need? Why would they make this up? Next you'll be suggesting the owner has an agenda.
The Observer have pulled out a delayed Moripoll from after the Glasgow by election giving it 37-31-17.
ReplyDeleteSo that makes the next ICM poll interesting. But Mori have an odd methodology and produce extreme results.
I am left wondering - perhaps millions of people actually do read Simon Heffer and Gerald Warner? You cannot help but think that if labour are serious about winning the next election they would not send out half baked amateurish PPBs - they would just publish Heffers articles.
And no doubt Heffer would happily oblige by toning up his bile.
Was that make me foreign secretary was peter talking to ashton,or make me your foreign secretary, and lo brown waved his wand and peter was satisfied with his position
ReplyDeleteWe await "News" from "insiders" alleging that Mandelson sold the Crown Jewels to Martians, and invested his ill gotten gains in Lord Cashcroft's publishing empire . . . certainly "rings true" . . . .
ReplyDeleteno backbone , he'll just grab another banana .
ReplyDeleteWhat fun that Mandy waited until the euroelection's were over! , reducing millipede's face saving options.
I take it this is in addition to all his other roles? Good. It should reduce the size of the Cabinet.
ReplyDeleteMandelson - the only remaining Labour politician who still believes.
ReplyDeleteBlair and Brown are physical ghosts. Miliband and Balls hang on their threadbare coat tails. Only Mandelson still believes that his boat can still come in.
With EU backing, he could rig the coming election, become the next Prime Minister, get Britain into the Euro, and seize the EU Presidency.
In his dreams, the NuLabour Reich will survive 1000 years, safely cocooned in their bunker, as Cameron closes in.
Foreign Secretary Mandelson?
ReplyDeleteNah, leader/Prime Minister.
How long from now can we expect the fourth coming of Herbert Morrisons grandson. Who on earth whispered to him that some day all of this will be yours?
There is a mental condition called delusions of grandeur, is this the vanity we are witnessing?
As he said in denial "Apart from the fact that I am not actually Jewish, I wear my father's parentage with pride."
Now , how odd is that?
"With EU backing, he could rig the coming election, become the next Prime Minister, get Britain into the Euro, and seize the EU Presidency."
ReplyDeleteI have to laugh out loud at fantasist gibberish like this.
The story is plausible.
ReplyDeleteThe Dark One loves to frolic with the corporations - not in the least bit squeamish about accepting 'hospitality'.
He's a globalist, a proponent of the "poste-democratic society" and an underhand operator, with a propensity for lying.
Yes you really must continue the form of government that can only be referred to as dictatorship by minority. That really has done wonders for this country since the second world war.
ReplyDeleteMilliband is just hanging around to go all in. If he keeps going he'll get blinded out.
ReplyDeleteI expect the shove when it eventually comes will have few chips and be called easily.
Mandelson will know that were he to be in this post that would be worth a percent to add to the diminishing Cons lead, and he would not want that.
ReplyDeletePoor, p poor Daniel Hannan objected as part of the tiny 40 votes against Baroness Ashton when she was up for her last job, and is so loudly against her this time . . .
She prob become the First Pres of our Galaxy and he'll Really tell us then - eh?
In the Labour party there used to be a word which described people like Hannan - Oppositionist.
@quietzapple
ReplyDeleteIs that back in the good old days when you actually had members of principle rather than a shower of spin doctors and power obsessives passing around 6 figure salaries like sweets.
"Might it provide him with a third opportunity to prove that he does indeed possess a political backbone?"
ReplyDeleteIf he had a backbone he would not need a third (is it really so few?) opportunity.
@Old Slaughter Re Oppositionism:
ReplyDeleteNo, when we had the prepondernace of wannabe losers who wanted to say "No!" to almost everything with chances of success.
Yours have been keeping a little schtumn, but even if they maintain that, no-one will believe them.
Few ever accused Tories of principle and sanity.
Really.
ReplyDeleteMust be a complete coincidence that 75% of the last century was Tory.
Maybe one day we will have a Labour government leave office with less unemployed. Perhaps with an economy in better shape than when they found it?
Hope springs eternal, in the meantime smear and call names.
Some one calling himself Old Slaughter fulminates re name calling!!!??
ReplyDeletePriceless!
Oh, and there were rather fewer years with Conservative Party Governments in the last century than suggested.
There were coalitions, Liberals, National Governments as well as labour ones.
Shurely shome confushion about cshenturies . . ?
Try the C19th, suits you sor . . .