From Scotland to Corfu.
Back slightly later than I imagined, so I'll get properly back into the swing of things tomorrow, but it's hard not to be fascinated by the powers at work behind the Mandelson-Rothschild-Osborne-Deripaska yacht story.As Justin and Bob Piper point out, Mandelson even sort of warned that the apparent briefing of conversations that occurred on the yacht involving himself bad-mouthing Brown could result in repercussions because of what else was also said on the good ship Deripaska. The difficulty is in knowing where Mandelson begins and Rothschild ends; the final straw appears to have been this story in the Sunset Times, linking Mandelson even further to the "super-rich" and especially Rothschild. Rothschild then sends a letter to the Times, detailing the conversations he was privy to involving the suggestions of donations, a letter which had to be re-written after the Tories
threatened legal action against the Times. All hell then breaks loose.
It has to be said that none of this is - yet - on the scale of almost any of the sleaze allegations against Labour. Just last week we learned for certain that Blair had directly changed policy after the £1 million donation from Bernie Ecclestone, something which took ten years before the whole truth became known. Blair's response was to declare that he was a "pretty straight kind-of guy". Osborne has been saying the same in not as many words. Unless things get worse, there's no chance of him being defenestrated. He is, and has been an integral part of the Cameron revolution in the Conservative party, and while I think he has been hideously overrated, especially considering his and his party's anonymity during the financial crisis, and lack of almost any substantive policy whatsoever apart from irrelevant or tinkering around the edges tax cuts, he's still likely to be the next Conservative chancellor of the exchequer. It does however further fundamentally expose the lack of difference between New Labour and the "new" Conservatives - both fascinated with and craven towards the super-rich.
Labels: Conservatives, George Osborne, Nathaniel Rothschild, Oleg Deripaska, Peter Mandelson, politics, sleaze
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