[Robin McAlpine Blog] Mandelson is an exaggeration, not an exception

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Mandelson is an exaggeration, not an exception

By far the most important thing to bear in mind when you observe the sheer volume of grime and filth which has adhered to Peter Mandelson such that he is finally (finally) sinking below the waves is that this is absolutely not an exceptional set of circumstances. In fact you should really accept this as ‘normal’. Every other version of it let’s our species off too lightly.

Let me kick off with this; when my team asked me if I knew Mandelson (I met him a couple of times but I didn’t know him) and I talked them through the early days of New Labour, I felt myself age. Two of the team weren’t born when I was in Westminster and the other was at primary school. The point is exactly that – it was terribly long ago.

Because my answer to ‘what was he like’ was really simple – charming and creepy and uncomplicated. Mandelson always was what he always appeared to be and repeatedly showed himself to be through his actions. Yet three resignations in scandals and the media was still granting him ‘elder statesman’ status even a couple of weeks ago.

He was venal, extremely clubbable, oblivious to what others thought of how he operated (or disinterested or delusional, I don’t know), enormously smitten with power and wealth and more than ready to compromise himself on the basis of each of these realities.

Yet it isn’t always completely obvious to me why some issues stick and others don’t. I’m not for a second trying to downplay the terrible things Jeffery Epstein did, but what about Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev? An appalling character known for democratic destruction, rampant corruption and widespread human rights abuses.

Tony Blair advised him (via a lucrative contract) on rebranding his image. Nazarrbayev arguably did more harm to children than even Epstein. Does Blair get a pass because he wasn’t photographed in his underpants?

This is the trick you see. In the world in which Blair and Mandelson exist, nothing is connected, there is no line you can follow. Everything is good until a crack in the curtain shows misdeeds, forcing the curtain to be pulled open a little. Then you find that a whole new curtain has been erected just behind the original curtain. The squalid reality between these curtains is quarantined, a one-off, unconnected to anything else.

We see this with the US Department of Justice saying claims against powerful people are ‘unsubstantiated’. That’s the whole point; it is unsubstantiated because you refused to investigate. They seem to think this is a curtain when it’s really just another crack.

The point here is that all ruling classes exempt themselves from the rules that apply to others, but now that is done not in pursuit of sustaining a renowned family name but of pure self indulgence

So the question is who is ‘them’? Who is it erecting all these curtains and doing it with such speed and efficiency? It is a global ruling class, and they’re out of control. I don’t want you to get the impression I think a ruling class is a recent creation. It isn’t, every society has its ruling classes. But how they behave and what they represent changes.

Kings started out as the ‘murder class’. They gained power as the best warriors. But that’s a terribly insecure platform for your power and suggests anyone better at murdering could instead take your throne. So we get the classic model of British ruling class ideology – arrive through violence, stay through heredity.

It became about the blood, a quality passed down. The right to rule was conferred by an intangible something that you inherent and we all had to believe in. This was of course insidious but had one redeeming feature – the ruling classes had to pretend they actually were superior. There was a weird ethical element to the classic ruling classes and it was called ‘honour’. They ruled because they weren’t barbarians.

Then the industrial revolution kind of screwed that up because here was a new route to power – money made through industry. Pure blood was less impressive when you were broke and some northerner with no heredity at all can buy your estates.

We therefore morph into the current era where there are two halves of a ruling class – one with power through bureaucracy, the other with power via wealth. The point of the ‘third way politics’ of the Clinton/Blair eras was to merge them. This has been successful. The World Economic Forum in Davos is the brokerage fair for those who make laws because they top a bureaucracy and those who shape laws because they are incredibly rich.

Crucially, they are not there because of their blood (on the most part) and so the need to demonstrate some kind of superior ethics or behaviour is lifted from them. Honour has been replaced with conspicuous consumption as the ‘theatre of justification for power’. I rule because look how much money I have so it must mean I’m worth it.

The point here is that all ruling classes exempt themselves from the rules that apply to others, but now that is done not in pursuit of sustaining a renowned family name but of pure self indulgence. Wealth and power are not the means of control, they are the goals of control.

Never, ever forget that corruption, greed and the abuse of power by a ruling class creates a single thread which connects abuse through time and space

In that world, Mandelson is the perfect avatar for what they all are really. Ignore all the tricks with curtains and distractions (I assume bombs will be falling on some far-off country soon to ‘move the story on from Epstein’), these realities exist in an unbroken straight line. And that line divides humanity as it stretches out, on one side the ruling class, on the other the not ruling class.

Donald Trump is ruling class, Alex Pretti is not ruling class. Peter Mandelson and Jeffery Epstein are ruling class, Epstein’s ‘girls’ are not ruling class. Tony Blair is ruling class, the dissident journalists jailed by his clients are not ruling class. Paula Vennells and Fujitsu are ruling class, sub postmasters are not ruling class.

Kingspan, Celotex, Arconic, Rydon Maintenance and Harley Facades are ruling class, the people who burned to death in Grenfell Tower were not ruling class. Senior police officers are ruling class, people crushed to death at Hillsborough weren’t ruling class.

But the mistake is not to follow this line to where it goes. Eventually it leads everywhere. The heads of the Water Industry Commission Scotland are ruling class, people who drink water are not ruling class. Isla Bumba is ruling class, Sandie Peggie is not ruling class. Historic Environment Scotland’s Head of Operations is ruling class, waiters of Indian subcontinental descent (the ‘chocolates’) are not ruling class.

CalMac Board is ruling class, islanders are not ruling class. The Glasgow City Council Directors who sorted themselves some very lucrative golden goodbyes are ruling class, Cllr Fiona Higgins who has pursued their dishonesty and is up in front of the Standards Commissioner is not ruling class.

No, Scotlands’ ruling classes don’t generally party on private Caribbean islands ‘decorated’ with young trafficked girls. They party in historic buildings they have no right treating as private property. They don’t deal in money like Epstein, but they do offer ropey businessmen half-billion pound guarantees on what look like an unminuted whim.

Right now they must be delighted you’re gawping and Mandelson in his Y-fronts, because they think it makes them invisible. And if they are invisible, they can just keep taking and taking.

So don’t let them be invisible. Never, ever forget that corruption, greed and the abuse of power by a ruling class creates a single thread which connects abuse through time and space and ties it altogether to explain why our species keeps fucking up, keeps making things worse.

We need to devise a new way of being governed, because neither their bloodlines nor their wealth come close to justifying any of this shit. Mandelson is nothing more than a standard ruling class chancer who pushed it just too far. Making this about him let’s the rest of them off the hook.

Again.

Source: Mandelson is an exaggeration, not an exception