Mandrake asks a sensible question in today’s Telegraph:
“The last thing “Mandy” Mandrake would want to do is to cause any trouble for my near namesake Lord “Mandy” Mandelson, but when the Business Secretary appears before the House of Lords on Thursday to answer questions about his links to the Russian aluminium tycoon Oleg Deripaska, there is one matter I would like to see cleared up.
Why, when I broke the story on October 6 of how Mandelson and George Osborne had been entertained aboard Deripaska’s yacht the Queen K, did the Business Secretary’s spokesman Peter Power tell me categorically that the social gathering was the “only contact” that he had ever had with Deripaska? Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, a former adviser to Mandelson, subsequently made it clear the pair had previously dined together on a number of occasions. Power told me that he had consulted Mandelson before he had addressed my question.
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