Is the EU not glamorous enough for Lord Mandelson?
David Blackburn 4:18pm
James Macintyre is well connected among Mandelson’s associates and he discloses that Gordon Brown agreed to back Mandelson if he chose to board the Eurotrain once more. Macintyre describes the revelation as a ‘demonstration of the supportive dynamic between what were at one time bitter enemies’, that’s true, though Brown would scarcely brand his right hand man an overrated liability.
What’s more intriguing is why Mandelson chose not to apply for the job of EU foreign minister, which he considered for a time. Baroness Ashton can only expect to exercise ‘quiet diplomacy’ at best, which is unlikely to appeal to a man of Mandelson’s tastes. As Fraser noted yesterday and Paul Waugh reports today, Red Ken expects a Mandelson onslaught on Labour’s mayoral nomination; after all, dolling out the medals to international athletes is preferable to debating wheat imports with a gaggle of Beneluxian nonentities. I wouldn’t discount Mandelson aspiring to even higher office before retiring to his bucolic idyll.
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Chuck Unsworth
December 21st, 2009 5:17pm Report this commentMandelson has a crushing fear of rejection. He'd never apply for anything unless it had already been fixed. Fighter? Yes, but Queensberry would certainly have viewed him with revulsion.
Holly ......
December 21st, 2009 5:30pm Report this commentBoring, boring, boring.
Liz Brown
December 21st, 2009 5:39pm Report this commentWould that be the James McIntyre who fabricates stories along the likes of Obama thinks Cameron is a lightweight. We must be entering the silly season. I am not entirely sure that Meddlesome will appeal to Londoners who are built of sterner stuff than the meeja....
HFC
December 21st, 2009 5:53pm Report this commentMandelson is a chump (or whatever word he used to describe the News International people).
In2minds
December 21st, 2009 5:55pm Report this commentPerhaps now we are on the threshold of world government the EU is too lowly for Mandy. He could team up with Dr Rajendra Pachauri of the IPCC. The one could help the other get even richer.
Beer Moth
December 21st, 2009 6:03pm Report this commentWhat is it with all this stuff about Mandleson?
I can't think who is the more undeservedly in the public eye for doing sod all, Mandy or Katie bleedin Price.
EyeSee
December 21st, 2009 6:33pm Report this commentQueensbury view him with revulsion!? I am expecting Mandelson to live forever as even the Devil is not keen on meeting him. I feel tainted just by being on the same Continent as him. He is like a contagion.
Dennis Churchill
December 21st, 2009 7:02pm Report this commentHave you considered the demographics in London? More than a third Ethnic minorities---of which how many are known for their support of homosexuals? Or Jews? Of the Ethnic majority the Conservative supporters are unlikely to vote for him nor the left leaning Labour supporters.
Where exactly do you think his support will come from?
By the way whenever I see that picture of him in the V neck it makes me wonder-is he the only homosexual man with appalling dress sense?
Percy
December 21st, 2009 11:14pm Report this commentOh god no! Not another Lord Peter season.
Amadeus Plonquer
December 22nd, 2009 1:14am Report this commentShouldn't the Mayor of London be a Londoner?
JohnAnt
December 22nd, 2009 10:43pm Report this commentBut Mandelson is not at all glamorous - except in the starry eyes of a few meeja wannabes.
Take, for example, that jacket, shirt, tie and pullover. The shirt collar does not fit, the shirt design is mass-produced, the colour of the tie does not match that of the jacket (which is a little too big, with lapels that demand an entirely different style of dress). No pullover should be worn at all with such a jacket and tie, and the violent colour of the pullover does not match anything else he is wearing. His ensemble is entirely unsuitable for business wear, or indeed anything else, except perhaps for local shopping.
And why is he grinning with such inane rapture, as if the photographer is a rarely-glimpsed old friend? Is he trying to appear 'boyish'? A rather ridiculous ambition in a senior politician advanced in years, surely?
For decades we have been preached to about the innate and unconquerable sense of gay taste to which other poor mortals can only vainly aspire. Poor Mandelson succeeds only in looking like the love-child of Dorian Gray and Vivian Westwood.
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