John Watson: A misplaced schadenfreude

John Watson was a partner in a City legal practice and formerly edited the Shaw Sheet online magazine.

“Ho- ho, ha-ha, ho-ho”; it is hard not feel a certain schadenfreude on seeing the ever so censorious Labour movement lose yet another of its team to scandal. Hilarious! What a jape!

But alas when one has stopped laughing and has had time to think, it is to realise that this is less farce than tragedy and a tragedy for us all at two quite separate levels.

The first is that it demonstrates a serious weakness in our approach to public service. In Angela Rayner’s case the issue was a serious one of tax evasion and, although a bright and promising minister, she clearly had to go. But what is it that made Mandelson unsuitable to fill the role of our ambassador to the USA?

Now Mandelson’s career has been a bumpy one with previous resignations in relation to undeclared loans and the abuse of ministerial influence. Undoubtedly very charming, very intelligent and with a very sophisticated political mind he has always been recalled to the colours because of his extraordinary ability to get on with people. Indeed despite early antagonisms he has managed to get on well with President Trump. An ideal man you would have thought to be our representative in Washington.

And yet all this has been thrown away because, able as is Lord Mandelson, he befriended Jeffrey Epstein a man of enormous wealth and influence who was convicted of very serious sexual offences. It is not suggested that Mandelson knew about or was in any way connected with those offences and indeed he was not alone in being a friend of Epstein. Many of America’s most powerful and influential figures were in the latter’s address book. No he has been removed from office because he got close to a bad man, an American version of Jimmy Savile, and that was enough.

It always makes me uneasy when the public demand higher standards from politicians than from anyone else. Of course misuse of public office is a problem, as is serious dishonesty, but outside that people have feet of clay and it is no good rejecting able people of dubious morality in favour of moral and stupid ones. Ask yourself this. Have you ever met someone who was put in their position because of their well-known rectitude? When if you have, then, unless it was George Washington, you have probably met someone pompous and incompetent. Suppose on the other hand you had met Nelson. Utterly brilliant, charming, loved by his men, able to take risks, and yet his private life such an immoral mess that he more or less committed suicide at Trafalgar. How would the nation have been served if the Starmers of 1805 had sacked him for his immorality? Well, I suppose we would be speaking French.

But Mandelson wasn’t even involved in the sex offences. He was merely friends with someone who turned out to be a villain. If we start excluding public servants on this fatuous ground, we will lose good men and replace them with sanctimonious prats: the present government is not so over endowed with talent that it can afford this. Nor can the nation and the movement in this direction is a tragedy for us all.

The second tragedy is one of waste. Mandelson was a clever man who seemed to be establishing a rapport with our most important ally. Now that is lost. At the moment we cannot afford to weaken our relationship with the rather unpredictable regime across the Atlantic. But we probably have, for no reason that I can see.