Andrew Gilligan: Boris's Little Helper With Yet More Smears

Lord Mandelson's London property ladder is a new focus for smearage from the loathsome and poisonous muppet and auto-sock-puppet Andrew Gilligan, writing in the Evening Standard.

Here is Silliman's manifesto:

Using publicly-available records, the Standard examined Lord Mandelson's finances and his proceeds from a decade in the property market. Even on the most generous possible analysis, we have established that there appears to be a substantial gap between the amount of money he was able to raise and the price he paid for his latest house.

And it is true. The Standard has assembled a series of facts and figures. There are though some assumptions here and there which are not necessarily consistent with being 'the most generous possible analysis". The precision and the self-serving description of the painstaking research aim to suggest that the precision and difficult provenance of these figures makes them complete and accurate too. In fact the whole thing is partial. Incomplete and politically motivated.

The supposed substantial gap, using Standard calculations, was £250,000. Or 10% of the price of the property. A comment from Nevsky suggests quite simply that this gap would have been met if Peter had received more than half of the inheritance to himself and his brother. That's certainly one explanation.

Presumably Gilligan is projecting his own very possibly venal, grasping and unprincipled character onto the Dark Lord?