You could smeel the relief in the papers the past week, when little Georgie Osborne challenged Lord Mandy to a bitchslap. Fun politics again, hot gossip and dodgy Russian billionaires and sundrenched yachts on exotic Greek islands: much more interesting than this boring old credit crisis turned recession that’s bringing everybody down in the whole world and you actually have to know too much about to write about it. Dangle a sausage of juicy innuendo in front of the British media and they’ll happily ignore everything else that’s going: perfect timing, now even Gordon has to admit Britain is sliding towards recession –“ending the era of boom and bust” indeed.
In the end it doesn’t matter whether little George or Mandy was right, whether George wanted fifty thousand pound or not. The real scandal is the shadow chancellor and the European Commissioner for Trade palling around not just with an at the very least somewhat dodgy Russian oligarch but also the heir to the
quintessential banking fortune. Yes, any party with asperations towards government in any western country has to be pals on one level or another with the real owners of the world, the ultrarich men and women who don’t care who rules the plebs, as long as their fortunes are safe, but to do it this blatantly?
This is one of those fights in which you wish all the participants would lose, but how much of this was choreographed from the start, what with Rothschild and Osborne being such old friends and all? Or is this just a long simmering inferiority complex coming to the fore, Osborne doing something stupid as telling on Mandelson because he’s jealous of the easy way Mandy gets easy acces to the dinner table
when he has to beg for the scraps? On Have I Got News For You Friday nigth they described the initiation rite Osborne had to go through at the Bullington Club was held upside down by his fellow members, who banged his head on the floor each time he failed to answer correctly the question: “What are you?” They said the answer was “I’m despicable”, but that was not quite it, as another gossipmonger disguised as journalist, Marina Hyde revealed. It was actually “I am a despicable cunt”. Not to play the armchair psychologist here, but that sort of thing must smart.
In a month when governments frantically pumped money into the financial system, capitalism’s heartland and talked tough about better and stronger regulation and an end to the greed and bonus culture in the City, this affair showed crystal clear where the real power still lies. It was best shown in the way Rothschild warned Osbornewhen the latter went on to deny the allegations against him:
Nat Rothschild, the merchant banker who accused shadow chancellor George Osborne of soliciting a £50,000 donation from Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, has warned he will destroy Osborne if the Tories continue to question his account of the discussions that took place at his villa on Corfu.
Declaring a form of uneasy truce, friends of Rothschild said he did not at this stage want to escalate the public battle with his old friend. They said Rothschild had not intended to bring Osborne down by disclosing the shadow chancellor’s involvement in talks about
raising money from Deripaska. Instead, the friends said, Rothschild had intended it as a “slap on the wrist” because he was furious
that Osborne had breached confidences in an attempt to damage Labour business secretary Lord Mandelson.
If that isn’t the voice of naked command, nothing is. “You boys can go on playing your little games, as long as you don’t bother us. But if you do, we’ll crush you effortlessly”. Osborne seemed to have gotten the hint, but I wouldn’t be too cocky if I were Rothschild. In this bourgeoisised world such blatant reminders of the old class system are not appreciated; even the queen has to “dress down” so to speak. Tories like Osborne can nurse a grudge as well and the political climate is ripe for a bit of populist rabble rousing…
