Brown nosing in Washington

Just when hordes of people are abandoning Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) one person thinks we should be marching in the opposite direction, and should perhaps take a more emollient attitude to the unpleasant billionaire. Who else but the friend of Jeffrey Epstein and Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska? Yes Lord Mandelson sees fit to lecture the UK government on how to make it up to Musk. What’s in it for Mandelson? One can only guess how these things work. Here’s the Independent, 26th October 2008 which may provide a clue:
 
‘Peter Mandelson's last act as European Trade Commissioner was to advocate new trade rules that will directly benefit the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Less than a month ago, in one of his final speeches before being recalled to the Cabinet and after he accepted hospitality on the Russian's yacht, Lord Mandelson announced a new EU trade strategy giving multinational companies freer access to raw materials, including scrap aluminium and natural minerals used in the production of the metal. Mr Deripaska owns Rusal, the world's largest aluminium producer, which has subsidiaries in Europe. The companies import both scrap aluminium and aluminium-containing minerals from Africa and India. The new rules would exempt such companies from paying expensive export duties, to the anger of development charities.’

All above board, as they say. Now of course Peter wants to be UK Ambassador to the U.S. To strengthen his bid, he had this to say (reported in the Daily Mail,  19th November 2024):

‘Speaking to The Times' podcast How To Win An Election, Lord Mandelson praised Mr Musk as a 'sort of technological, industrial, commercial phenomenon'. 'It would be unwise, in my view, for Britain to ignore him. You cannot pursue these feuds,' the former Cabinet minister added. 'You can't afford to do it. We should try and kick it into touch as soon as possible. 'If I were the Government here, I'd be asking the embassy in Washington DC to find out who his other British friends are. Who are they all? 'And they've got to be used, I think, as a bridge to Musk. And so that's what I would do. 'You know, swallow your pride, find out who his friends are and try and get into those networks. 'You cannot just continue this feud indefinitely. You've got to get over it. You've got to, he's got to be reintroduced to the British Government.’

But why Musk? It doesn’t appear that he has been given any trade or foreign policy role by Trump (with whom it is reported Mandy has already had lunch with). This ‘feud’ Mandy refers to may be a reference to the actually truthful remarks made by David Lammy (and other now Cabinet Ministers) about Trump’s character and suitability for office a few years ago. What is it about the mega-rich that attracts Mandy like a moth to a candle? And whatever one thinks of Starmer, the ‘feud’ has all been one-way in a stream of insults and taunts from the semi-deranged (in my opinion) gob on X.

P.S. The great industrial Musk ‘industrial phenomenon’ was given a big helping hand by the US government to get started—$500 million it was reported. It would be very handy now for Tesla if Trump follows through on his proposed 60% tariffs on Chinese imports.