The Peter Love In
CentreRight: Gordon and Peter: a theory
The MSM is full of positive coverage about Mandelson's return...I sense this is one of those issues which will separate political insiders from the wider public,...
Written into all the articles about Mandelson's return, you sense a general air of bewilderment and head-scratching: surely these two men hate each other? Surely Mandelson and Brown didn't speak to one another for fourteen years? Surely their great rivalry was a constant headache for Tony Blair? The solution to this emotional puzzle seems quite obvious to me....
But Tony's gone. Impossible for you or I to understand the strange quality of the relief that his departure must have brought even, or especially, to those who once worshipped him. The strain for both Mandelson and Brown must have been immense. That tension, the requirement to sublimate feelings of cowardice or treachery - or sheer jealousy - has vanished. All that Mandelson and Brown are doing is resetting their emotional attachment to that which it was before the former PM got in their way. The only surprise is that it's taken them so long.
The mutual circlejerk of the political insiders, the party and the press comes to its inevitable pointless conclusion with Peter's return. The rest of us look on in disgust and with the longing for the feel of a hippopotamus hide sjambok in our hand and the chance to use it.