Across the pond

Peter Mandelson, once again a powerful member of the New Labour cabinet, is just as open to criticism as Hazel Blears, who Brown has publicly condemned.

Mandelson has attracted little press comment. Because he is now a member of the House of Lords, so unlike his colleagues in the House of Commons he does not have to face his constituents. And even if he is convicted of a crime he cannot be stripped of his peerage, nor his right to sit in the House of Lords.

But the computer disc, sold to the Telegraph by the fearless man from the SAS, reveals that he claimed nearly £3,000 for money spent on his Hartlepool constituency home, soon after he had announced that he was resigning as an MP. He later sold this house at a profit of £136,000. The rules, lax as they were, allowed to MPs to claim for necessary maintenance of their homes, but not for things which would improve the value of the property.

In practice it is difficult to differentiate between these two. Which affects many of the ‘scandalous’ stories we have been reading in the papers. And it makes me worder whether history will judge the last two weeks rather differently than the media is viewing it at the moment.

Douglas Hogg has been publicly shamed for claiming over £2,000 on dredging his moat, as a result of which he has paid the money back and retired from politics. But that is clearly maintenance. If you have a moat, it needs dredging.

Mandelson, it appears bought a dilapidated house, did it up, and sold it for a nice profit. Blears also used the system to make capital profits.

All three of them say they have not broken any rules. And they may well be speaking truth. But they were both using tax-payers’ money to fund their spending.

And Mandelson was doing so when not having to make do on the too-low MP’s salary. He was on a ministerial salary.

So who is the least deserving of our trust?

Hogg, started out richer than the other two, as the scion of Quintin Hogg, Lord Hailsham, the bell-ringing Tory Party chairman who revived the party in the 1950s. Or Blears who came from a humble background. Or Mandelson who was reared in that Labour heartland, the Hampstead Garden Suburb, by his father, the advertising manager of the Jewish Chronicle, and his mother, who was the daughter of Herbert Morrison, the number two man in Clement Attlee’s post-war Labour Government.

Declaration of interest. Hogg, I think I have met once, but his wife, Sarah Hogg was a valued colleague when I was working at The Economist in 1975. Mandy, I chatted to regularly at Sunday afternoon teas in the Garden Suburb in the 1950s. He was then in short trousers, a very nice well behaved boy. I would never have guessed he would grow up to be ‘The Prince of Darkness’.