The real origins of the Mandelson Osborne feud and why Mandelson wants to keep it going
James Forsyth 2:22pm
One of the great misapprehensions about the Mandelson-Osborne feud is that Osborne was the instigator of it. The Independent in its piece on the relationship between the two says:
“When, a couple of months later in October, Peter Mandelson was offered a peerage and brought back into the Cabinet as Business Secretary, Osborne began briefing journalists to the effect that Lord Mandelson, then a European commissioner, had spent his holiday dripping "pure poison" about Gordon Brown.”
But my understanding is that Osborne gave the briefing in the summer. Osborne called Daniel Finkelstein, a former colleague of his from Tory central office who was at the time comment editor of The Times, straight after dinner
to pass on what Mandelson had said. This wasn’t intended for publication, but rather part of a game where people swapped disobliging comments that Blairites made about Brown. Also, it was hardly news that relations between Mandelson and Brown weren’t good. Mandelson had already said publicly that he would step down from his job as EU trade commissioner at the end of his term to deny Brown the pleasure of sacking him.
The genius of the Sunday Times splash on October 5th was to realise that all the disobliging comments that Mandelson had made about Brown in private, many of which were common knowledge in Westminster, were now newsworthy. The story was not an Osborne plant.
However, when Mandelson denied the story, Finkelstein immediately blogged saying that he was sure it was true because he had spoken to ‘the top Tory’ concerned that night. Given how close Osborne and Finkelstein are, this made it appear that the whole thing was a coordinated attempt to destabilise Mandelson when it wasn’t. Indeed, certainly by Monday the 6th, Osborne was trying to shut down the story — refusing to talk even to sympathetic journalists about what Mandelson had said. Osborne realised that he wouldn’t come out of a fight with Mandelson without a fair few bruises, and so wanted to avoid one.
The Mandelson-Osborne story will run and run because Mandelson wants it to; it was Mandelson who decided to respond to Osborne’s Demos speech with a column full of personal barbs that were designed to get newspapers to write about Corfu again. He realises that he has already incurred so much reputational damage that the Corfu story can’t hurt him — hence him going back to the Rothschilds this year. By contrast, Osborne still has most of his political life ahead of him and aspirations to higher office. He doesn’t want the whole Corfu incident — which raised questions about his judgment — dredged up every few months. But if Mandelson has anything to do with it, it will be.
During the election campaign, expect Mandelson to repeatedly try and highlight the fact that he and his ‘old friend George’ are the two key strategists. Mandelson knows that journalists find this kind of process-driven, personality heavy story irresistible and that until the Tories win the election, the Mandelson-Osborne one will always be seen through the prism of Corfu.
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Andy Carpark
August 13th, 2009 2:33pm Report this commentIs this series of Mandelson stories a plot to deprive us of the will to live?
I suspect you are going to have a Jones Town-style mass Coffee Housers' suicide if you carry on like this.
Hysteria
August 13th, 2009 2:40pm Report this commentyawn.....
Kevyn Bodman
August 13th, 2009 2:47pm Report this commentThis post has caused me much more irritation than most on these pages.
1) Mandelson is a posturing ninny. Why do you care what he thinks?
He had to resign TWICE under a cloud.
He is one of those people who, I fervently hope,would dislike me if we ever met.
2)Osborne rang 'straight after dinner' as 'part of a game...'.
For heavens sake this is the sort of behaviour I would expect from teenage girls, not men in their 30s, whether MPs or not.
And these two men are having a 'feud'.
Pathetic, the pair of them.
Dirty Euro
August 13th, 2009 2:55pm Report this commentIf i remember right Osbourne reported that Mandy had met a suspicious Russian oligarch, and that this was a terrible scandal, only for it to be reveled he knew this because he met him too and then it was revealed he may have asked the russian for donations. So it was started by Osbourne.
Frank P
August 13th, 2009 2:55pm Report this commentLie down with dogs - get up with fleas.
Marbury
August 13th, 2009 2:56pm Report this commentGreat post. The only bit I'd question is whether Mandelson will be highlighting himself and Osbourne as "the two key strategists". I think this misses it slightly. What he'll be doing is playing up the idea of a relationship between himself and Osbourne as between an uncle and an errant child, in order to force the question of whether voters want someone so inexperienced in charge of the economy. Hence his use of Osbourne's first name, his patronising remarks about having a lot to learn, his reference on the Today programme to Osbourne "piping up"...
Hereford
August 13th, 2009 3:04pm Report this commentAnd your point is? Please please stop supplying this odious little slime bag media oxygen.
Irene
August 13th, 2009 3:07pm Report this commentJames - Pleeese stop writing about this horrible man.
chris
August 13th, 2009 3:11pm Report this commentCan we please stick to what Mandelson says compared to what he does, or is supposed to do, please? He is a cabinet minister with God-knows how many responsibilities. Can we have proper in-depth comment about the real world, please? For example, we are soon to know about how 6,000 jobs came to be lost in MG Rover. He is already spinning against the Directors. Who chose them to take over the company? Is he being so pathetic about this to inflict maximum damage on Brown? Does he divert our attention like this to avert our attention from HIS job? He is a sitting duck. Get on and shoot him down.
Mr. Humphries
August 13th, 2009 3:14pm Report this commentHandbags at Dawn...
Liz Brown
August 13th, 2009 3:18pm Report this commentWhy do you, at Coffee House,, persist in banging on about the loathsome meddlesome? I, and I'm sure most of the general public, could care less
This Corfu story will only carry on if you in the meeja insist on talking about it
Verity
August 13th, 2009 3:18pm Report this commentFive points:
1. Who cares?
2. Who cares?
3. Who cares?
4. Who cares?
5. Who cares?
English Guy
August 13th, 2009 3:20pm Report this commentYet, he may have to resign again if something dodgy surfaces about his latest extraordinary mortgage repayment - paid off in under a year. The PoD is a highly suspicious untrustworthy shrewd operator. Osborne beware.
Percy
August 13th, 2009 3:23pm Report this commentWho's on next week? At least Harperson raised a chuckle last week.
Evan
August 13th, 2009 4:05pm Report this commentIs Mandelson stirring this pot to divert attention? Is he trying to hide something? There were some pertinent questions in the Times business section yesterday(?) about the speed with which the PoD had repaid a very large mortgage.
dave b
August 13th, 2009 4:08pm Report this commentso bored of august non stories.
Andy Leeds
August 13th, 2009 4:24pm Report this commentThe real story was and is Mandelson's relationship with the Russian and the Rothschild's. Just exactly what 'favours' were done for whom and by whom ? If Mandy had any sense, and given his very poor judgement in the past concerning money, he would allow this Corfu story to die rather than risk the press actually doing a whole lot of digging. 'For I say unto you the love of money is the root of all evil. . . . '
Don Logan
August 13th, 2009 4:35pm Report this commentI think we should all boycott any further Mandelson stories. That'll learn them.
oldtimer
August 13th, 2009 4:43pm Report this comment"Mandelson Osborne" is worth a shot in the anagram machine. Picking up on comments so far, two seem appropriate:
"nobleman drones so" followed by
"banned snores loom".
CS
August 13th, 2009 5:14pm Report this commentYour obsession with Mandelson is becoming nauseating. He's a man who is taken seriously by the media and by nobody else in the country.
You have to wonder whether James' problem is that his head is stuck up Mandelson's backside or his own.
Trafalgar
August 13th, 2009 5:32pm Report this commentMandelson scored a direct hit with this though.
Cameron's relations with Osborne have never been quite the same post-Deripaska and Osborne emerged diminished from the whole affair.
Consider that in the following months Cameron promoted Hague to be his de-facto Deputy, Clarke to be Business Secretary, and Pickles to be Chairman with joint responsibility for co-ordinating elections.
All three of these moves served to reduce Osborne's power base as these areas had all previously been his exclusive domain.
R King
August 13th, 2009 5:55pm Report this commentVerity
You missed the most important bit
WHO CARES!!!!!!!!!!!
logdon
August 13th, 2009 6:58pm Report this commentHey, there are other sites out there with meaningful stories involving real consequenses.
From what I read in the US blogs and sites, those tea parties and town hall meetings are shaking up a storm. Or is Obeyme another ring fenced politician?
OK, Israel. A country now fighting for real survival with Iran tooling up and the US casting the ropes yet not a peep.
That's two, the list is as long as you make it, but obviously Mandelson and his petty gossip and positioning is paramount.
Why?
David Ossitt
August 13th, 2009 7:20pm Report this commentDirty Euro.
August 13th, 2009 2:55pm
"If i remember right"
Invariably; as on this occasion, your memory is very selective, and has a bias, that leans very much to the left.
Boudicca
August 13th, 2009 9:13pm Report this commentPLEASE - stop pandering to 'Lord' Putrid's ego by making out that any and every word that passes his lips is worth gold dust.
The vast majority of the electorate have no time for a man who had to leave the Government twice for semi-fraudulent activities - and who came back to an unelected role to prop up a Prime Minister with no mandate to govern.
Stop treating him like the second Messiah. He isn't. He IS a slimy, untrustworthy and thoroughly repulsive EU stooge.
TGF UKIP
August 13th, 2009 9:51pm Report this commentJames, I thought it was Fraser's nice little earner on the side to act as Osborne's very own Max Clifford.
Are you to trying muscle him out?
You only get paid in rolls of wallpaper, you know - though it is, it must be said, very posh wallpaper.
drakes drum
August 13th, 2009 10:59pm Report this commentThis is kindergarten politics being played by two people who are totally removed from real people and real issues.
the problem for the Tory party is that it is led by a man who has no idea of life 'outside the bubble', and obviously encourages boy george in his infantile escapades.
Lets face it. None of us can abide the arch villian mandleson. BUT we accept that private discussions should remain private.
That boy george divulges private conversations does not impress me nor fill me with confidence about him.
The tories will rue the day they plumped for Cameron and Osborne and their public school cabal,
JohnAnt
August 15th, 2009 4:27pm Report this commentPity they can't both lose.
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