One-Party Britain, Part 94

Like Andrew Adonis and the vile James Purnell, that unrepentant old stalwart of the Young Communist League, Peter Mandelson, has obviously been offered a Cabinet job under Cameron, and has obviously accepted it. Adonis can keep his present one and be in that position. Purnell’s departure was not for that reason, and came many months after the situation had become perfectly plain. Indeed, Adonis was promoted to Cabinet long after his deal with Cameron had been made public to minimal comment, so unremarkable has such a thing now become.

The Cameroons’ favourite think tank, other than that forgers’ den owned by the Blairite-praising Michael Gove, was one of several continuity operations created out of the rubble of the Communist Party of Great Britain. However, it appointed an unrepentant old Trotskyist from back in the day, Geoff Mulgan, as its Director. Since it combined the Stalinist and Trotskyist heritages, and since it did so at the heart of faaaashionable London’s pseudo-academia, its influence over New Labour was massive, almost incalculable.

And now, its influence over the New Tories, who have in George Osborne a Number Two and Heir Apparent without one per cent of the independent brain power of Gordon Brown, is set to be at least as great. Mulgan, meanwhile, is on for a peerage and Ministerial office under Cameron. Without repudiating even the tiniest detail of his past. Well, of course not.