Peter Mandelson is over-exposed at the moment

Little Angussie

I dont think this theory carries much weight outside the Westminster Village. Speaking for myself, I don't know of anyone who listens to a word that the slimy creep utters.

Only the most rabid, tribal Labour partisan would listen to a discredited, twice sacked for cheating and lying sleeze who is most definately in politics for personal aggrandisement in the shape of status and wealth.

He is unelected but shoe-horned into the lords by Brown to shore up the PMs (also unelected), position. Just imagine wakening up on Friday 7th May to find that this odious low-life (and Mandleson) will hopefully be consigned to the dust bin of history and their discredited party and its dogmatic spendthrift philosophy out of power for a generation!

annassasin

The vision of Mandelson spread thinly across westminster. Grayling will give fresh reason for Mandelson carrying on and on. He should fall on his own sword now.
Labours old mantra will return "Same old Tories"

Woody

"The media would dance to his tune" - finally someone in the MSM has admitted it.
WHY - has this admission taken so long?
WHY - have you allowed this mendacious, slimey, obnoxious man get away with it all these years?
WHY - are you still persisting with the notion that this man has any talent whatsoever?
WHY - are you bothering us with this nonsense?

He can't be seen enough in my view because everytime he appears it's more votes for the tories.
He's 'yesterday's man' along with the rest of the grubby bunch.

paul holdstock

quite why the media accept anything he says as having any veracity, is beyond me.
if he were called as a witness in a criminal trial, he would be described, by most, as an 'unreliable witness'.
twice having resigned in disgrace,
caught red-handed committing mortgage fraud, plus innumerable incidences, known to the media, of falsely briefing against various other politicos'
hardly makes anything he says reliable, trustworthy, or worthy of reporting.

charles hercock

Darkness is darkening.Let it be.They are imploding

AB

Lord Oleaginous of Slime

In2minds

"Mandelson is doing too much: his appearances have lost their impact".

Thus we have Mandy fatigue, so who is surprised? He has been over valued for a very long time. He is even looking dated!

Scott Mills

naybe, the sight of the dark lord of spin actually puts the voters off. I, personally, called stomach the man. The bad face of politics, He should never have come back after his resignation.

Mazza1230

It has always been a mystery to us voters what you journalists have ever seen in the odious Mandelson.

Surely now that he is twice-disgraced and unelected it is time to stop paying the old fraud any attention at all ?

Chuck Unsworth

Good. The more the blood-sucking Mandelson is exposed to light the weaker he becomes.

There's no need for wooden stakes. He is mortifying before our very eyes.

Richard Taylor

I agree but not only is he overused he is losing his impact. The £22 billion "Black Hole" launch backfire put him on the defensive at the beginning of the week and he has not been able to recover. He knows he has lost the initiative and he does not like it.His testy/frustrated appearance Sky News (Adam B)today was a very revealing. He even had a Gordon Brown humour failure moment at the end just before the camera moved away from him.

Willie de Peepul

"Mandelson’s ability to shape the news agenda"

Well, that's a big part of the problem, innit?
'way back in 1997, Major's leftovers had just about given up the fight, and they left Bliar, Broon, Mandelbum & Campbell to dictate, not just shape, the agenda.
Right now, this is what the Conservatives should be doing, BY WHATEVER MEANS. C'mon, guys, make a fight of it. . . please?

FaustiesBlog Libertarian

Sshhh! Don't tell him. ;)

Gawain

Does Brown have any control over anything ? If he isn't going to serve a full term, as Mandy hinted, this will mean that the choice at this election will be between a Conservative party led by an MP standing for re election and a Labour party controlled by an unelected and somewhat creepy Peer. Not very transparent !

toni

You think he's exposed because it's your job to be scouring the press and media desperately searching for bad Labour stories and good Tory ones. I haven’t read any Mandelson article or seen him on TV this weekend.
The only one really exposed today is Grayling.

toco

Mandelson is no longer a positive help to Labour and indeed is the exact opposite.No person would admit to voting for a party which includes Mandelson in its ranks so the more he is given media time the better for the Conservatives.The Prince of Darkness is bringing the curtain down on this corrupt and totally discredited Government.

ollie

lol mandelscum asked adam bouton to "grow up" on sky news this morning. So funny watching a deluded man lose a weakening grip on reality.

mandy is nothing more than a ridiculous parody now - and the media laugh at him more than anything.

Tankus

The unacceptable face of British politics ....

paulg

Mandelson lost the plot today exposing himself as an unattractive figure on sky news.

Clearly he knows Mr Brown has seen through his duplicity and is beginning to blame him for the terrible start to Mr Browns re election.

With only weeks to go before polling Mr Brown will have to decide if his fate is to be left in the hands of men who he does not trust and, have clearly decided to work against him. Charlie Whelan is loyal to Brown and never steered him in a wrong direction.

Mandelson has been complicit in branding Mr Brown as a bully, disfunctional and a liar. In ten years of government Mr Brown stood above all that and, only when mandelson was brought back has be been mired in mandelsons filth.

It speaks for itself.

paul fitzgerald

he can spout as much as he likes he will fade into the background when liebore get kicked out.why the mainstream media big him i dont understand dont trush him at all do you?

Boudicca

But Labour is so short of anything resembling talent, they have little choice. When you deploy Milipillock and Miliplonker to unveil a poster which only succeeds in giving 'Dave' street cred, you know that Labour is scraping the bottom of the barrel for both ideas and people to communicate them.

Mandelscum was a picture of petulant sulking on Adam Boulton this morning. He knows it is all going very badly wrong.

Pete, Scotland

Don't think he needs to worry about being over exposed. He thrives on it!

Watched him this morning putting (and keeping) Sky's Adam Boulting in his place.

Mandelson really is a master of the art of politics and I cannot think of an interviewer that is his equal.

This morning Boulton had him on the hook about a future Labour VAT rise which he continually refused to answer, but then allowed him to babble on about Tory policies which they deny.

You guys in the media (all the media) really need to sharpen up to help me see through all the lies and deception that these guys are spinning.

I am comming to the conclusion that the biggest, and most immediate, threat to our democracy and way of life is not from nuclear weapons or Global Warming, but from a sloppy media that does not expose the lies and corruption of our politicians.

General Zod

Nice for him that he has begun sporting a watch that cost a third of his maximum after-tax annual earnings in any of the last ten years (a £22k Patek Philippe).

Honestly obtained, of course.

Richard

Sometimes I read the posts on here and I am reminded of the crowds going to the FA cup final, aninterviewer sticks a microphone under their noses and says " whats the scored going to be"
The loonies claim incredable scores like 10-0 or 5-1 half time then Rooney will score a hat-trick to make it 8-1.
Sometimes you get the thoughtful...."it will be close but 2-1".
Just the same on here the loonies who are so partisan they write off the opponents with glib comments and insults yet deep down they know Drogber or Arshavin or whoever are real threats but they have to big it all up to make themselves feel better.
Best bit is when they come out kicking the tin cam shrugging the shoulders going ...the ref was useless and that last goal was off-side.....muppets the manger has to go.....or the directors are rubbish!
respect where it's due Mandelson is a political genius as is Blair as was Thatcher or MacMillan ....no-one is ever going to remember Grayling Redwood or Winterton they are minnows.

Roger Daley

His twee sotto voce psychobabble really gets on my tits, but not as much as Gordon Brown doing the same in his best "Oooh Doctor Findlay" poor mouth.

jon dee

Mandelson still carries more weight with a lazy sycophantic media tribe than he does with the voting public who find him untrustworthy and dishonest.

Slick, smarmy and superficial, his influence lies with a weak prime minister and a shipwrecked Labour party.

His Mr Angry act appears to impress the Lib-Dems more than it does the public, with apprentice Chris Huhne performing a convincing imitation of an ever available rant for all subjects.

Austin Barry

That Brown is so repugnant is the only reason that we see so much of Mandy.

The difficulty is that Mandy is Uriah Heep personified: oily, dishonest and trailing the slime of corruption like a dying slug.

And, frankly, if he turned up at my B&B with his Brazilian catamite I would tell him to look elsewhere. Not because of his sexual orientation, but because he looks like someone who would nick the towels and hangers.

Zoo keeper (Elephant House)

@ Scott Mills 9.25pm

"He should never have come back after his resignation".

Which resignation Scott ?
The first one ? Or the second one ?

strapworld

Richard, your writing exposes real fear!

I have many friends, aquaintances and those I pass the time of day with in the streets and shops. I can tell you that Mandleson is regarded as a person who should be behind bars, and not ones in Pubs/Hotels etc.

How Mandleson has this hold on journalists is quite amazing. He is a little runt who chould be sent back to Hartlepool and fed to the Monkey!

smell the glove

Mandelson was outed by Paris. He was prepared to hide as long as it served him. Now he thinks he is Peter Tachell. i agree with Liddle. Tachell (sic or not) has got balls

sunlituplands

Mr Richard, I presume you mean Drogba? I think, perhaps, if you spent more time getting out away from your computer and watched some football, went for a walk or even popped into your local for a pint or two, it would do you the world of good. It would certainly improve your knowledge of lethal Ivorian finishers. That said I'm constantly amazed at your energy and prolific postings , which leads me to believe you are either glued to your laptop in a basement somewhere or you are being remunerated by a third party to respond to each new blogette.

Not a moment goes by after the arrival of a new Speccie missive, before you are up and running, letting the world (well, this wee corner of it)know your opinion on it. With the greatest of respect, why bother? Surely your energies would be far better spent on other sites that are more in tune with your socialist persuasion? Or hitting the streets with Prescott et al in the quest of a fourth victory. 4-0 to you, if you will.

That said, I do enjoy reading how angry you get and I would no doubt miss your daft rants if you did up sticks. But I do worry that you'll do yourself an injury. Referring to "loonies who are so partisan", I presumed you'd had a self-knowledge revelation. At least it made me laugh. Judging from other's reaction to you on here, I think it is fair to say that you are the in-house clown and cabaret all in one, never one to let the subject in hand get in the way of a cut-and-paste leftie rant. It is only my altruistic tendencies that have compelled me to write this, you understand. Titilating your opponents with goggle-eyed gibberish surely can't be the most productive use for your prodigous energies?

p.s. One poster recently referred to you as "Richard (Ed Balls)". As a relatively infrequent visitor to this site, is there something I've missed?

Verity

Vulture compared, lo these many moons ago, David Cameron's mouth with a hen's arse. Having, to the best of my knowledge, never seen a hen's arse, I accepted this as Vulture's professional opinion and incorporated it into my lexicon of the Cameron physiognomy.

However, having just seen the photo above, of Mandelson's mouth, I am interested in what part of what's anatomy Vulture would compare this individual's mouth to.

Opinions from others would be most welcome.

Major Plonquer

As usual I agree with Richard. 'no-one is ever going to remember Grayling Redwood or Winterton they are minnows.'

No. People will remember Brown, Mandelson and Blair. They will go down in the Great Socialist History Book as the founders of New Labour - the political party that took the most people out of poverty.

The fact that the people they took out of poverty were killed in Iraq is incidental and hardly worth a mention.

Zoo keeper (Elephant House)

@ Richard 11.19pm
"... respect where it's due Mandelson is a political genius..."

Richard.
I'm beginning to feel sorry for you.

Mandelson is one of the main reasons why the reputation enjoyed by the so-called "political elite" is at an all time - and well-deserved - low.

Shame he's not such a genius when it comes to filling in a mortgage application form.

Richard

@Major Plonker

I rest my case m;lud!!

neil staton

No one I know likes him or understands why he is there, and that includes many labour voters.

Everyone thinks he's a sleeze and no one trusts him, what were they thinking bring him back?

Any Colour but Brown

Under ZaNu Labour the poorest 10% of the population have become poorer, whilst the richest 10% have become richer.

Why was Mandleson made a peer? Because he was and is unelectable. I think that that says all you need to know about him. He makes Snake-Oil salesmen seem honest and trustworthy.

Percy

Lord Peter's recent appearances have been woeful. It's all very well sniping from the sidelines but he would have to face some pitched battles sooner or later and when he has he has shown what a weak performer he is. Hopefully the msm will wake up to what the rest of have realised for years about his lordship,that he is all fart no sh*t, but I doubt it.

Fergus Pickerinjg

Richard, what will people remember Mandelson FOR? They remember Mrs Thatcher for beating the miners and the Argies. They remember Blair for taking us to war in Iraq. They remember Brown for boom and bust onn a cosmic scale. But Mndelson? What has he ever DONE? He talks a lot, mostly out of his arse in my opinion, but what has he done?

Oh,and I am staggered to think that somebody could pay £22K for a watch. For a watch? What does it do that mine (five quid down the market) doesn't? Perhapos it beams Mandy up to his home planet.

Helen Wright

Mandy's peformances serve only to show how pathetic the interviewers are. They don't allow Tory guests to get away with half what the corrupt [and proven to be so] Mandy gets away with.
Why don't they ever just cut him off and say "answer the question" or we'll finish the interview?

Chris lancashire

Overexposed and overrated.

Willie de Peepul

@Richard
7:59am

You clearly didn't read Major Plonquer's posting properly; you couldn't even cut and paste his name properly, let alone understand the sense of his final sentence.

Nicholas

Fergus Pickering: "What does it (£22k watch) do that mine (five quid down the market) doesn't?"

Pander to Mandy's excessive vanity? I shall say no more.

General Zod

Verity cannot even post on the subject of the thread. Every post from the hag is bile dripped onto Cameron.

This thread is about Mandelson. One would think you might have something to say about him, but you are blinded by your hatred for the Tory leader.

Ivy Eileen

@ Verity -

"Opinions from others would be most welcome".

Please read (and remember) General Zod @ 10.50 a.m.

Regarding Mandelslime, two questions always come to mind - (i) has he yet learned how to fill out a mortgage application form correctly and (ii) who voted for him ? He is always first to criticise others and, yet, has little to justify his arrogance.

Richard

@Sunlituplands,

Wow .....glad to know you are a fan!
I post here and elsewhere....I like it here the people are so friendly and nice to me so here I will stay for the time being.

Perhaps you would like to comment on the VAT v NIC argument? or list which taxes you think should rise to pay for the 6.5 billion funding gap.....oh and don't say savings even Cameron says that is a lie.
Oik says savings should start now but wont admit (unlike Cameron yesterday) that means IT and ID card jobs.

anne allan

And talking of slime - I hope Blair has had a nice restful Easter break, so he's all fired up to boost the Labour campaign over the next month.
Pardon? What's that?
Oh, I see, he's used up his allocation of the tax free days to stay in this country.

General Zod

Yes, I did miss the comment about Mandelson's mouth (after the bile on Cameron).

Drivel about the shape of his mouth doesn't really add much to the conversation.

He always knew of course how to fill in forms, being a knave, not a fool.

Zoo keeper (Elephant House)

22k watch ?
Says it all.

He incriminates himself.

King Prawn

Mandelson is on TV a lot because Brown keeps putting his foot in his mouth (just like today in fact).

Mandelson's mission is not to win the election, even he knows that he is on to a loser there, but to save enough Blairite MPs to ensure that Milliband not Balls becomes the new leader after the election.

Paddy

Don't tell them what they are doing wrong James.

Just give them enough rope and they will hang themselves.

Fox in a box

Austin Barry,

that made me laugh out loud, prompting Mrs in a box to enquire as to what was so amusing, and forcing me to have to explain what a catamite was to the poor child!

Tim W

I have to say that the way Mandelson can say something and the media immediately believe it is disgusting. Nick Robinson bows to Mandy all the time, and I've never seen Paxman as weak as when he's interviewing him.

The only man to be able to handle him is Adam Boulton.

sunlituplands

Richard,

The problem with trying trying to have a detailed debate about economic policy, on this forum or anywhere else for that matter, is that the numbers, figures, projections, plans and targets are all now gibberish and meaningless. The legacy of Brown's so-called Iron Chancellorship is total obfuscation and smoke and mirrors. From his appalling sale of gold reserves early on, through the pensions rape to the post-Chilcott apology over defence spending and his even more recent immigration figures cock-up, any reputation he may have once had is gone. Add to that the vastness of the national debt and, any which way you look at it, Labour's husbandry of the economy over the last 13 years has been disastrous.

The debate over NIC contributions vs tax cuts/rises, or however one would which to frame it, is based on the shifting sands and hypothetical projections of a discredited and tired administration. None of it can be nailed down and none of it means anything. Whatever else they may or may not have pledged/promised, the Tories have had least signalled an intention to be a tax-cutting party. That is something people can grasp and will inevitably overrule party-politcal squabbles over hypothetical minutiae. Brown has spent so long recalibrating the economic ground rules that he has rendered substantial debate meaningless.

Unless you are a rabid socialist or a public-sector employee with your head in the sand, this is the inevitable future for the British economy. Allow the private sector to create the wealth that New Labour's experiment has squandered. The business community's whole-hearted acceptance of this inevitability is the final nail in the coffin for Brown.

Of course the Tories will have to prove their economic competence, but that will only come in government. Should they prove not up to the job, as I'm sure you will argue is likely to happen, they may have a rather short stay in power.

The tax-and-spend era of 1997-2010 has once again seen another Labour administration leave the nation's economy in tatters (global recession or not) and, added to the weariness of a 13-year old administration, change is the only option.

The key debate now is not Osborne vs Darling but the direction of the Labour party after May 6th. A Miliband (the "D" variety) centrist opposition or a Balls-led, union-heavy socialist one. The Tories will undoubedly be hoping for the latter and, if 1979 is anything to go by, they may get their wish.

As Fraser has pointed out in his astute piece over the weekend, there is no point fighting the battles that have already been lost. For Labour, it is what happens during the long summer months that will define the political landscape of the next few years.