CHARACTER/NOT BORN YESTERDAY

Nailing Lord Mendacious-One

Mandolf Von der Bumm

Peter Mandelson will only hang himself if the rest of us are paying attention

Not for the first time last week, a friend/reader asked me the reason for my 'homophobic obsession' with Lord Mandelson. As has become my way with such gently loaded questions, I pointed out that his homosexuality is relevant because it is both amusingly licentious and disloyal - but there's no phobia about the gayness here: my fear of Mandelson is based on what any reasonably discerning person can spot within ten minutes of watching him operate - which is, quite simply, that the bloke is a nasty piece of work.

I spent twenty years as a focus group moderator - and if nothing else, that teaches one to understand the nature of body language. Observation of a person's behaviour in various situations can be bolstered by various other associated methods - based on the old adage of watching what people do rather than what they say. But Mandelson is so indescribably ghastly, you can use both criteria, and still carry on building a consistent case.

I've been in the same room as Fondelbum just the once, and only for ten minutes. It was a large meeting, and one in which I had no active role. It took place just over a year after things could only get better, and three things were apparent during the short time I was there: the policy being discussed was in complete chaos, the man himself seemed to frighten most everyone in the room, and his clipped manner of speaking oozed menace. Not for nothing did an old lobbyist friend of mine refer to him soon afterwards as The Ice Queen.

Our newest elevation's career to date has been a seemingly endless series of denials, hastily-arranged exonerations, and - much later - rewriting to the effect that what happened to Mandy was 'unfortunate', or (as a piece I read last week suggested) 'an over-reaction considering the alleged crime involved'. Many people are indeed unfortunate in such matters, but there also exists the old American maxim, 'If it walks, quacks and flies like a duck, chances are it's a duck'.

Except that Lord Mandelson is anything but clumsy: as the allegations have skittled hither and thither over the years, he has become adept at pirouetting deftly to one side for the first few days - and then doing his 'if you have anything on me, by all means let us see it'. Once bitten twice sly, the new Minister for Business has allegedly denied investigators access to lists, and then been unable to explain names erased from those lists once released. The two latest cases - a lowering of EU aluminium tariffs following a friendship with aluminium Tsar Oleg Deripaska, and 'going into bat' for his mates at Atticus Capital - remain ones of circumstantial evidence. Here at nby, allegations we heard from Hungary about the EU Trade Minister's friendship with agrarian Magyars were closely time-related to passionate arguments in support of extensive grants to Hungarian farming. Again, it's all circumstantial. Far be it from us to suggest wrongdoing where there is no hard evidence.

So the only route left open for those who wish to avoid Fondlebum's laughable cries of 'foul smear' is to actually record some fibbing - and produce the hard evidence for mendacity. This is an altogether more productive strategy, because it attacks one of the biggest incurable weaknesses Peter has: while he covers tracks, he just loves sailing close to the wind - if you'll pardon the blended metaphorical expression.

On Sunday October 19th, Lord Mandelson went on BBC's Andrew Marr show (perhaps Mandy thought, as Marr was on holiday, he'd get a smooth ride) and faced questions on everything from his career and the allegations already dominating the British press through to the state of the economic outlook and what his new role would entail. The session was a Master Class in how to evade, bully, ignore, and lie to a relatively young interviewer. But the legals say I can use the word 'lie' there, because as always with his ilk, Brown's latest Cabinet addition became overconfident. And he told a great, big, fat, black porker of a fib.

"For the last ten years " he said, "we have been paying back much of the debt left by Conservative government since we came to power, and so Britain is now in a much better position to borrow during a crisis". So complete a whopper is this about what's been going on since 1998, it allows anyone to nail Fauntleroy's forked tongue once and for all.

First, the paying back debt for ten years fantasy.

From 1998 until 2002, the Government did indeed pay back some National Debt. In fact, quite a lot - but bear in mind that this was during Gordon's Prudent Period. And - lest we forget - while he may not have sold off the family silver to do it, he sold half of the company gold mine....for the kind of price more often associated with Yorkshire coal mines in the early 1980s.

At this point, the total debt stood at £315billion. By 2008, the figure had nearly doubled - to £605 billion - without taking the Northern Rock bailout into account. Over this period of 'paying back much of our National Debt' the debt-to-GDP ratio climbed steadily from 30% to 36% - until 2007, that is. Since then (for reasons which should be obvious) it has shot up to 43%.

Second, the oft-repeated 'in a much better position to borrow in a crisis and thus withstand recession' line comes fresh from cuckoo-land.

In August 2007, the Government's borrowing stood at £8 billion a month. While the interest rates alone in a year on that were costing more than our armed forces even then, this August gone the figure stood at £10.4 billion. (For a look at the ramifications of this, see Lookout)

In classic fashion, the Bonkers Dog Lala Banjo Band at the Treasury are forecasting a total borrowing next year of £43 billion. Quite why they think borrowing will now halve to £3.3 billion a month isn't explained in the footnotes anywhere. However, even if we generously project forward at the August number, with the added depositor guarantees and £500 billion bank bailout included, it should be perfectly obvious to anyone why in 2009 the government borrowing level will exceed half of total GDP for the first time ever. (As the panel to the right shows, even this hides further worms in a variety of worryingly dented cans.)

Great Britain in October 2008 is in a terrible position to beg for money. In a world where bankers run miles from any sign of dodgy credentials, the UK is about the best example of a sub-prime borrower one could find. I can honestly assert - in a sense of genuine balance - that there is more chance 0f a run on the Treasury in 2009 than there is of us finding it 'easier than most to borrow'. The whole idea is an obscenely altered form of reality.

So to Fondlebum lancers everywhere, I say this: it's much easier to snare Lord Mendacious-One in his own hubris-soaked off the cuff porkie-pies than it is to trace any previous naughtiness. Like all the New Labour tribe, he thinks everyone else but him is a retard - and thus feels safe, in any and all utterances, in lying his informally arranged head off.

But as noted elsewhere (See Mediocrity) without more Paxos and/or better-briefed interviewers, the gargoyles will keep on getting away with it. New Labour has thrived on hack laziness: we must not allow this rabble to play the three-card trick yet again.

Spot a Peter-Porky today.You know it makes sense.

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