Peter Mandelson said recently he’d not spoken to Gordon Brown since moving to Brussels — and yesterday we could see why.
The EU trade commissioner publicly mocked his former cabinet colleague during a meeting at the world economic forum in Davos. Brown had spent just one day at the Swiss ski resort, but it was enough to infuriate Mandelson. On Friday the chancellor called for faster progress in global trade talks, and suggested that trade officials — like Mandelson — could be sidestepped in favour of world leaders.
Mandelson responded yesterday during a panel discussion in front of business leaders and politicians. With heavy irony, he said: “A meeting of heads of government at which President Chirac comes along and makes new concessions on agriculture? I think it’s a brilliant idea. I think it’s an inspired suggestion by Gordon Brown.”
Mandelson knows it’s more likely he will be godfather to the next Brown baby than for the French president to give way on farm subsidies. The two men have a feud that goes back more than 10 years. On Friday, when Brown was addressing UK businessmen, a mobile phone went off. “That’ll be Peter Mandelson,” he joked.
Advertisement
Advertisement
MPs diagnose trouble over peerage for Labour’s donor doctor
Tony Blair’s attempt to raise a Labour donor to the peerage has run into trouble from MPs. Dr Chai Patel made his fortune from private nursing homes and clinics, but critics have raised doubts about his business practices.
His name was on a list of potential Labour peers, leaked last November, but now former minister Kate Hoey and Liberal Democrat Vince Cable have written to the House of Lords Appointments Commission, which is vetting the candidates.
“There are major questions over Chai Patel’s business practices,” says Cable.
Patel has given £5,000 to the Labour party. Might now be a good time to ask for his money back?
Advertisement
Goodness knows how we’ve struggled through, but it’s been 88 days since we last had a chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster — the longest this post has been vacant since 1361. So why not scrap the post, last held by pensions secretary John Hutton? With that ministerial salary, think of all the diversity outreach workers we could pay for?
Advertisement
Love seat gets brush-off froma coy Commons
An erotic “love seat” has been banned from an art exhibition at the Commons, although not on the obvious grounds that it would distract MPs from their work. The Horn Chair by Ashley Lloyd was nominated for the 2004 Turner prize but culture minister David Lammy said it would “cause offence”.
“It is my most well known piece and I think it would have looked fantastic in the Commons,” says Lloyd, “although I don’t think it would have taught them a lot.”
Apparently, the chair enables occupants to make love in 42 positions, which is two more than even Mark Oaten can manage.
Advertisement
Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is to let television cameras into Lambeth Palace for a fly-on-the-cloister documentary, even though few people emerge unscathed from this sort of coverage. With fierce disputes over women in the church and homosexuality this ITV series will be like EastEnders in a dog collar. Is Rowan still sure he’s made the right decision?
Such is the sexual frisson and air of mystery that surrounds The Spectator that a lengthy queue has formed to become the magazine’s next editor. According to chief executive Andrew Neil, there are 15 “serious candidates” now being whittled down to a shortlist of three or four. “The field is strong with many of the names regularly touted in the press on the list,” he says. “I do not anticipate any huge surprises. There is no dark horse candidate.” The new editor will be unveiled in mid-February. Fingers crossed then, not to mention legs.
Writer Matthew Parris recalls cruising for gay sex on Clapham Common when he was a Tory MP and bumping into at least one colleague, and possibly another. “And years ago, I saw a Labour minister emerging from a fairly low gay dive in Soho,” he reveals. Perhaps the parliamentary authorities might care to install a division bell in these areas — for those MPs who’ve been unable to find a suitable pairing back in Westminster, of course.
It’s not only the Eurosceptic British who rage about pointless EU regulation — what size and shape our bananas should be, that sort of thing. Boris Johnson went to interview the Italian justice minister for his BBC series on Rome and found him raging about an EU directive to ban wood-burning pizza ovens. “It was pure Bill Cash,” chuckles Boris.