Bare-knuckle rhetoric from Mandy

Andy Leeds

Typical of Mandelson. Well we would like to know what the Home Secretary knew and when. We would also like to know more about all documents that were passed to Gordon Brown when he was in opposition. As Brown 'colluded with [civil servants] in riding a coach and horses not only through the Civil Service code but also through the law' one trust the Police are now investigating these matters and will shortly arrest the Prime Minister. After all he is not above the law.

GJTory

He really is a nasty piece of work.

Quite amazing. No evidence of anything just accusations and smears.

Peter Wilson

The problem with Mandy trying to manipulate the news agenda is quite often it involves his name being associated with it, and I believe that's counter-productive.

Given his name is tainted by previous scandals and his association with spin, it's not just in the Labour party he is unpopular and this essentially undermines his message.

My wife, who is not politcal at all, everytime she sees him on the TV says: 'get that gharstly man off my telly' and I imagine she speaks for a hell of a lot of people.

Anna

Mandelson said much the same on the Today programme this morning. He may be a slimy toerag, but he's also a dangerous adversary and the Conservatives *should* be careful not to hand ammunition to such as he. Moral outrage is fine, and justified, but releasing that search video was plain silly and any hint of theatrics will rebound.

C Powell

What the Tories should say in reply is that they are doing what all Oppositions do - which is revealing information which the Government is hiding from the public about how the Government is failing the British people and that the Tories will continue to expose the failings of the Government and hold it to account in every way they can.

Don't accept the terms of the argument; simply turn it back on him: say (and show) that it is the Government which is failing, say (and show) that it is the Government which is lying and the Government which is hiding the truth from the British people.

Why not use that lethal phrase: "If the Government has nothing to hide, why is it so shy about telling us what we want to know."

We really do need an attack dog to make these points. This is the sort of standard techniquest which any half-way competent lawyer would use. Are there no punchy lawyers with a vivid turn of phrase on the Tory benches (and I don't mean the Dominic Grieve type - more Robin Cook)?

I'm sick of making these suggestions and then finding some feeble teenagers making long-winded points with all the oomph of someone reading something out from a telephone directory.

Nicholas

This is only what to expect from a regime that pretends to conform to the British constitution in order to radicalise it. They are all closet Marxists, Trotskyists and communist extremists and will use any dirty tricks available to achieve their ideological aims. Smears and personal attacks are stock in trade for these people. They fall back on it in most all debate or discussion, together with a nice line in moral blackmail and the overarching Political Correctness they brought here in the first place.

Mike, Brighton

Am I the only one to notice that the venom, sheer partisan nastiness and ill-feeling that is now infecting our politics received a rocket boost coinciding with Mandy's re-arrival in government?

Oscar

The same spiel was delivered on the Today programme and given instant headlines by the toadying BBC. This is becoming sinister. All our main news outlets are colluding with this shameless propaganda. Mandy is certainly up there with Goebbels. Maybe someone at the Speccie could let us know why so many of our broadcasters are complicit in this poison?

Oscar

I also wonder why it is that in the face of this onslaught on our democratic rights, so many of right of centre commentators seem more enthusiastic about condemning their own than taking the fight to Labour.

TrevorsDen

It would be risible were it not so sinister. Presumably the BBC sycophants did nothing to test our Minister of Propaganda's claims.

johnfaganwilliams

What is interesting is that it is being reported elsewhere that Mandy is setting a hare running re Volt the GM electric car that-assuming GM survives - will be laucnhed in Europe in a couple of years. Mandy is saying that the govt will help finance this being built in Halewood Liverpool. More intersting is the suggestion - not spelledout to any extent that I can see - the HMG would encourage the manufacturing of techy products. I think this plays well to conservatives such as myself who can't see a Morris 1000 without going into a diatribe about the demise of our manufacturing industry. If we can't do cars per se we can certainly do tech to go into pretty much anything. I wrote an article three years ago post Rover that a sensible government would encourage us to use our brains to design cars and then have them built in Brazil or somewhere. Gordon Murray - perhaps the car industry's only current recognised genius - is developing a completely fresh look at vehicle manufacturing based on small production units based close to places where people will actually buy - so in UK we might have a factory in the south midlands and north for example. Despite our eduction system we do still have some clever people about and any government that pledges to re-invent "made in Britain" and back it with cash would have an instantly popular message. C'mon Dave you know you want to have an industrial/manufacturing policy for the 21st Century. don't let Mandy have this one away please

liz Brown

David Davis needs to unleash the hounds - and someone else, perhaps bring up the Depriaski connection again - just to remind the public of quite how venomous, and oily this mandcious slimeball is

Richard Holloway

Mandleson on the Today programme was horrid. What was worse was how the interviewers let him get away with it.

Fergus Pickering

Robin Cok was not a lawyer. He had a degree in English Literature and if he was anything other than a politician he was a teacher.

Andrew Forbes

I'm fully in agreement with C Powell's "We really do need an attack dog to make these points" and "I'm sick of making these suggestions and then finding some feeble teenagers making long-winded points ".

The Tories should have won the economic arguments hands down, and lost. Now Labour have an episode where Labour have politicised the police force to the point where investigative opposition is an arrestable offense. They should be on the floor with this. But they're back, landing punches.

Winning should be easy.

JONNY

Methinks you're too much in awe Peter.
But C Powell hits it on the button. Where's the Tory Attack Dog? The German Shepherd who gets his poisonous fangs into Mandy's upper thighs and clenches tight till he howls.
Put the fear of God into the Prince of Darkness.
Won't come from Gentleman David.
Where then?

RODEST

It is better to have the conservatives colluded with a civil servant than to have Mandelson colluding with the Russians who will not give up an assasin that operated on the streets of London.

If the terrorist police should arrest anyone for political misconduct, Mandelson should be first.

dennis

Mandy's just interfered in a current police investigation by declaring that Christopher Galley has broken the law.

Ministers are supposed to make no comment on such matters and it's highly irregular to suspend the presumption of innocence in the manner exemplified in the words:

riding a coach and horses ... through the law

Most improper. Could it be a resigning matter for a minister to prejudice the chances of someone getting a fair trial? Then we'd have the complete trifecta.

Forlornehope

The correct response is to ask my noble Lord what his boss would say in answer to the same question apropos his own activities in opposition.

disgusted

Media is now 24 hour "I'm a celebrity" of one form or another.

"You're on TV because you're funny, hateful, or shaggable" (AA Gill)

Mandy is hateful so he's on.

Matt Pain

It seems that the word odious was invented for Peter Mandelson

THX1138

TrevorsDen- Doh - Mandelson was on Sky.

Boris has put foot in it.

http://tinyurl.com/5dkz87

Boris Says "No Prosecution In Leak Inquiry" How does he know?

He should stop meddling & remember that he has a professional position as chairman of the LDN police authority, that should remain above his political bias.

C Powell

Fergus: I know Robin Cook wasn't a lawyer but he eviscerated the Major Government over the "Arms to Iraq" affair and did much to paint the Tory government as one which was sleazy, unprincipled and in collusion with some very nasty people. We need someone to do the same job here. Mandelson is not half as clever as he likes to think and his points are both pretty obvious and pretty easy to rebut.

Certainly if I can do it then there should be someone somewhere in the Tory party who can think, comes across as a normal human being, isn't pompous and can talk in crisp and vivid sentences making simple points. If they can also do this with wit and humour which undermines the pompous self-regard which Labour ministers have so much the better. And if the BBC questioners don't ask the questions, Tories should make a point of saying that they will now make the points/ask the questions which the interviewer failed to.

In this case, the simple point is that the Government lies and covers up its own incompetence and then tries to bully and smear the Opposition for doing their job. That's all that needs to be said - repeatedly - because it chimes with what people feel. Why is it so difficult for anyone in the Tories to do this?

Roy Simpson

...I would like to know from the Conservatives whether their frontbench and their leader knowingly colluded with that civil servant in riding a coach and horses not only through the Civil Service code but also through the law."

Mandelson's concern for the law is touching. Somebody should remind the oily creep, and others like him may have short memories, that making a false statement in a mortgage application has in the past resulted in a prison sentence.

Hereford

Arghhhh! Peter,

You (the media) all keep twittering on about how evil, but clever and cunning, he is. It's like a kind of, slightly creepy, anti-hero worship.

The truth is that he is neither clever nor cunning. To anyone with half a brain he is just a tranparent lieing little snot.

His only skill is in being so barefaced, and in control of his body language, that he will look anyone in the eye and tell lies without any sign of conscience or concern.

I just wish you (the media) would stop twittering about him like silly girls and hold him to account.

TGF UKIP

C Powell is exactly right in all this. I have been struck by how many non political people and even lefty sympathizers have been aghast at this outrage. It is interpreted as being indicative of a police force that thinks it can do as it likes and a government that will stop at nothing.

All in all, an absolutely open goal for the Tories but one they seem determined to miss.

The current "leadership" and front bench are completely put in the shade by the media performances on this subject of Michael Howard and Ken Clarke.

That so much seems to be expected from DD speaks volumes about the general view of his successor - and as for that video, even to say that it was redolent of sixth form media studies would be an injustice to sixth formers.