Mandelson should shut up about cross-dressing
Lord Mandelson has today accused the shadow chancellor George Osborne of “political cross-dressing”. One one level, fair enough: if Osborne is claiming the Tories are the progressive party, then Mandelson is right to contest that. He is trying to steal Labour’s clothes, to use a more traditional political phrase.
Policy Network/CreativeCommons
What worries me about Mandelson’s choice of words, though, is the way it recalls Damian McBride’s e-mail suggestion that the proposed website Red Rag should spread false rumours about there being photographs of Osborne dressed in women’s clothes. The Sunday Times’s revelations about McBride quote him as using the phrase “cross-dressing” in relation to Osborne – and he did not mean it politically. The Guardian rightly called McBride’s smear puerile: no grown-up could think it clever or funny, and certainly no adult could think it “progessive”, to mix lies and intolerance in that way. If Mandelson thought the McBride smears were a serious matter – he said so at the time – then he should certainly not be using language that recalls those smears.
One of two things has happened here. Mandelson may have used the phrase in all innocence as a political metaphor. That would be uncharacteristically inept. I’d rather believe that, though, than the alternative – which would be that he used the phrase cynically in an attempt to reinforce McBride’s disgraceful and stupid smear in the public mind, knowing he was pandering to prejudice. Were that true, it would be shameful.
In any case, Mandelson should not use that language, or anything like it, again. It’s not only wrong, it’s counter-productive and if repeated will hurt Labour, just as Damian McBride’s activities hurt Labour. If this kind of recklessness is what Mandelson meant by his underdog strategy, he should forget it.
Categories: All WW, Comment, Labour, News - Current Affairs
Oh, come on. I count myself as reasonably up to speed with politics, and I’d completely forgotten (if I ever knew) that sleazebag McBride had suggested a tranny attack on Osborne.
Your idea that Mandelson might have been trying to reinforce this idea in the public mind might just work amongst the biggest politics nerds of Westminster and the media, but in the world where the public mind actually exists, the idea that George Osborne cross-dresses doesn’t even exist.
OTOH, regular references to Peter Mandleson as Mandy might well be attempts to play to a latent and concealed homophobia in the general public.
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They might, mightn’t they? You might have forgotten about the content of the McBride e-mails, Doug – at least consciously. But I doubt Mandelson has. That’s why I find his choice of words – in the Guardian today too, I note, so it’s clearly deliberate – so objectionable.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/12/peter-mandelson-george-osborne-progressive-conservatives
I’m afraid I have to go with Chaplin on this one: the link is tentative at best and wildly absurd at worst.
I genuinely think that no one has given this issue a second’s thought. I also think that’s for the best.
Tendentious argument. First I knew of this possibility was this post.
Mandy, though, has no history as a gay man *except via the BBC slam on Matthew Paris and via assumption/gossip. I have little time for him on this score simply because he’s not out. I am fed up with him appearing on lists of prominent gays when he can’t bring himself to say the words. It’s hard to read his attitude as anything other than either shame or political calculation. It is not equality to have him hiding his life partner away because it suits him. It’ not about privacy it’s about denial.
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I guess we will never know whether this was a specific reference to the smeargate story or not. If it was, and it could well have been, then it would have been done as a sly nod to Osborne, who I am sure is still very aware of the story, rather than an attempt to whip up the story in the media again. It would have been done to antagonise him – something Mandelson is very good at doing, particularly with Osborne.
However, until I read your post Carl it not crossed my mind and I think the link whilst is undoubtedly there, is a very loose link.
Paul – why should Mandelson talk about his sexuality? We don’t talk about any straight politicians’ sexuality as though, in itself, it is a story. Surely he can refuse to talk about if he wishes to, for whatever reasons he sees fit. I do not see what he is doing wrong. Even if in a worse case scenario he actually is ashamed of his sexuality – and I have no idea if he is or not – why should he not keep it private?
I’m glad you think the link is there, Garbo: I think so, too, whether intentional (as you say, to wind up Osborne) or not. I don’t think it’s me who’s raking up smeargate.
To very roughly paraphrase Nye Bevan, if Mandelson can sincerely say his choice of words was innocent – and it may be – then it was in any case a very stupid choice of words.
Oh, and the Guardian sub who puts cross-dressing in the title is also clearly consciously smearing Osborne.
I really don’t see it. “political cross-dressing” has been a cliché since long before McBride.
I still think you’re taking offence on George Osborne’s behalf when there’s none to be taken.
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“We don’t talk about any straight politicians’ sexuality as though, in itself, it is a story.”
No, how silly of me to assume that the parade of wives, husbands and children – happy families – means nothing.
Mandy can do what he likes, but to actually hide his partner away says nothing about him? I think not.
.-= Paul Canning´s last blog ..Gordon Brown: Wiring a web for global good =-.
Paul -
If politicians want to parade their wives, husbands and children and play happy families then that is fine. But their is no obligation and if they choose not to, then that is their choice also.
Anyway, what has any of that got to do with sexuality?
“Mandy can do what he likes, but to actually hide his partner away says nothing about him? I think not.”
I really do not get your point. What, exactly, does it say?
The fact that something’s a cliché doesn’t mean it can’t be used unfairly, whether deliberately or carelessly so. Mandelson must know, or should know, that the phrase recalls smeargate. He’s not a media tyro.
It’s not on George Osborne’s behalf that I object: I’m a Labour supporter, and want higher standards from Labour than McBride represented. That’s why I’m unhappy with Mandelson’s dipping his toe back in the murky water. I’m surprised I’m the only one to have reacted in this way – if many others had done, it could have caused yet another crisis for the government. To have risked that was a real blunder.
As a matter of interest, I don’t think “political cross-dressing” can be all that old a phrase – we didn’t talk about “cross-dressing” at all till the 80s at the earliest, I don’t think. More like the 90s I suspect. The first use of “political cross-dressing” I’ve found a link to was in 2002,
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020722/editors
and the first British use I’ve found was by Melanie Phillips in 2005:
http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/?p=899
I wonder if there are earlier examples.
I’m not getting into the Mandelbrot punchup, but the concept is used to demean opponents.
In one of my interest areas, I notice the “men in skirts / frocks / dresses” gibe against Cardinals, the Pope and priests is used pretty routinely but not *that* regularly, e.g., by Mary Honeyball MEP here:
http://thehoneyballbuzz.com/2008/03/26/men-in-frocks-deny-human-rights/
It also appears in the Guardian and the Indy (very occasionally) from time to time.
If they knew that the same gibe was used in 1938 to try and create an image that priests were homosexuals to damage the RC, they might back off a bit, but it’s just a bit of fun of course.
I’ll post about it at some point, but not yet.
My view is that if you have to demean personally your opponents then you’ve lost the debate.
Though I admit that boundaries are blurred in political knock-about. I guess it comes down to a version of “don’t say something you wouldn’t say with the person and your mother both in the room.”