Mandy…floats like Madame Butterfly, stings like….Madame Butterfly

Bullygate rumbles on, but so far the arguments being gathered against the charges in general (and Christine Pratt in particular) are the sort of corny amdram one has come to expect from Team Ten and Lord Mandelson.

First off is the odd suggestion that Ms Pratt has betrayed a confidence by naming the employer. This is akin to suggesting that a police witness betrayed a confidence by identifying a paedophile. Number Ten is the abuser here.

What’s more (see Sunday’s Observer) it’s an abuser with form. Who cares who did the bullying? It happened on Brown’s watch….it didn’t happen with any other Prime Minister in recent history.

When Christine Pratt (now reborn as ‘Woman at centre of bullying storm’) says she ‘saw red’ and spoke to the BBC, she was referring to the loathsome Mandelson’s smarmy cover-up job on Marr’s show yesterday. She is absolutely right to condemn this conspiracy of silence about corporate bullying – it’s her job, remember?

It’s not as if Mandy doesn’t have form as long as Gordon Brown’s list of actual and potential traitors. Remember his Lordship when the expenses scandal broke?

‘This is a scheme hatched by the Daily Telegraph and its friends in the Conservative Party to create the perception of wrongdoing”.

Remember his outburst over the future plans for the BBC?

‘This is a grubby little agreement between David Cameron and his friend Rupert Murdoch to destroy the BBC’s role in our culture’.

This was his effort today via the BBC he is so keen to preserve:

‘Lord Mandelson said a “political operation” was being directed at the prime minister, and suggested Conservative press officers had been “guiding journalists towards Mrs Pratt, assuming that she had some fuel to throw on this fire.”‘

Does anyone imagine for a nano-second that Lord Mandelson has a scintilla of evidence to support this malicious allegation? Certainly Tory HQ doesn’t: Hayden Allen there told The Slog this afternoon:

“This is the default position of the Downing Street machine – to smear the messenger as they have done so many times before.

Serious allegations of bullying within Downing Street have been made by both Andrew Rawnsley and Mrs Pratt. Instead of addressing them, they are dismissing Mrs Pratt as a Tory party stooge. She is not.

Now Peter Mandelson claims that Mrs Pratt was ‘guided by some Tory Party press officer’ She was not.

There is a simple way for Gordon Brown to clear up these serious allegations, that is by instructing Sir Phillip Mawer to investigate whether any breach of the Ministerial Code has taken place.”

So at the risk of coming over all tabloid here, The Slog has a suggestion for all those hitting this piece – that you email Mandy ( mandelson@bis.gsi.gov.uk ) with the following message:

Dear Liar, Where’s the Beef?