The Sultan Of Spin held grand court this morning at the BBC’s Today studio in Westminster. As James Naughtie fawned about, Lord Mandelson settled himself into his chair, airily waving away offers of peeled grapes and goblets of unicorn’s milk. Nubian slaves were ordered to keep the feather fans silent.
Down to business. The Arch Artificer was on cracking form, easily catching Naughtie’s googlies (ooh Matron!) and lobbing them back in unrecognisable form. Naughtie: “For all the money poured into (education) it did not produce the results that you claimed they would.” Mandelson: “It’s hardly surprising that in the circumstances of a financial crisis that blew a hole in our material wealth and left us with a large deficit to reduce, people took a somewhat gloomier view then than they had done previously.”
Naughtie: “You said about Gordon Brown people didn’t like him. Do you regret that?” Mandelson “The public also recognised that he was a big figure. In facing the financial crisis that we had to confront at the time, he grasped the big picture and he responded with big judgements that enabled us to get out of that.” It takes a brass neck to completely ignore the negatives and speak only and exclusively in positive terms. Does it work? Well….yes. Somehow, Naughtie’s questions faded away, and the listener was left with Mandelson’s elegantly grafted soundbites. None of which really related to the questions. A one-club golfer? Yes, but what a swing he achieves with his mashie niblick.
Tags: Mandelson, Spin, Today
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