Shared Opinion

2 May 2009

Mandelson’s fixation with bananas repays study: it shows that he has not really changed

I could be wrong. In fact, I’m almost certainly wrong. The closer one looks, the less clear it all gets. There is clearly some link between Mandelson and bananas, but what? Whether bananas happen to Peter Mandelson, or Peter Mandelson happens to bananas, we shall maybe never know. Perhaps he is indeed bound by some Prescott-style Faustian promise to say ‘banana’ at every opportunity, and Hartlepool politics, global free trade and the Labour party just bear the scars. Or perhaps bananas dog his every step, inexplicably, to the extent that he fears he may be mad. Either way, this could happen with nobody else. Newly cuddly or not, Mandelson has not changed. Even with bananas, one looks to him and sees mystery and conspiracy; truth behind truth. There’s something going on here beneath the skin. There always is.

I am troubled, and perhaps more than I should be, by reports of Barack Obama keeping his new, super-secure Blackberry in a holster. A grown man, clearly, should only wear a holster if he is also carrying a pistol. I know some people disagree on this, notably most of the Swiss and some people with small cameras, but Obama should really know better. It changes everything about the man. Once you spot it, you start to look at him differently. The way he holds his elbows. The movement of his Adam’s apple. The fact that he almost certainly can’t dance. Don’t be fooled by the foxy wife. He’s a geek.

It’s these little chips in a man’s façade that allow you to see his soul. Recently, for example, I have become fixated by George Osborne’s ties. It’s not the fabric or the style. It’s something to do with the way he ties them. Just below the knot, somehow, they always get really narrow. I doubt he even knows that he’s doing it, but it looks too old, too posh and too Tory, and I’m convinced that people would like him more if it didn’t happen. Similarly, Dominic Grieve’s big problem is the way that he always puts flouncy handkerchiefs in his outer breast pocket, and always appears to have gone to some effort to make sure they match his tie. Almost imperceptibly, it stops him from looking like a man worth listening to.

On most fronts, Obama does have a curious licence to break the rules. This, I guess, was what ‘yes we can’ was all about. On torture, Iran, terrorism, Cuba, Europe and global warming, I’m as impressed as anybody at his willingness to throw convention from the window and wipe the slate clean. But a Blackberry in a holster? That is an audacity too far.