‘We are intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich’, once drawled Peter Mandelson, ‘as long as they pay their taxes.’ And it seems the socialist Svengali is practising what he preached, with his latest appointment at a new British bank.
William Hague famously mocked the New Labour spin doctor for his many honorifics during the dying days of Gordon Brown’s government – ‘it would be no surprise to wake up in the morning and find that he had become an Archbishop’ – and now Mandelson has a new title to add to his collection.
For the Baron Mandelson of Foy in the county of Herefordshire and Hartlepool in the county of Durham has become the new ‘deputy group chair and senior independent director’ of the fledgling firm The Bank of London (TBOL Limited).
A trawl by Mr S has revealed that Mandelson last month teamed up with another former Labour comrade – Baroness Margaret McDonagh – on the board of the bank, according to Companies House records.
McDonagh previously served as General Secretary of the Labour party under Tony Blair between 1998 and 2001 before – quelle surprise – Blair gave her a peerage in 2004, just four years before Mandelson got his. But it was famously the Prince of Darkness who, in the 1990s, led his party’s charm offensive on the City’s bigwigs as part of Labour’s efforts to schmooze the rich and powerful.
Clearly, it was not for nothing then that Mandelson’s flunkies were spotted at Labour party conference in September dispensing different business cards for different audiences. One card, presumably for the proles, bore the simple words: ‘Peter Mandelson’; the other boasted his rather more impressive Lords title, bestowed on him by the Queen. Up the workers, eh Mandy?
With ‘two Jags’ Prescott shedding his gas-guzzlers, at least ‘two cards’ Mandelson is keeping the New Labour good life going.
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