When the Telegraph broke the MPs’ expenses story by giving the worst-behaved Labour MPs a well-deserved kicking, Lord Mandelson went on prime time telly to tell us all:

“This is all an attempt by the Daily Telegraph and its friends in the Conservative Party to create the perception of wrongdoing”.

You don’t hear Mandy referring to that appalling smear any more. Now that the same newspaper has caught Clegg putting Party donations into his private bank account (something even Nick Robinson called ‘a rather rum arrangement) the £23,000 Watch Man quoth thus:

“These reports are all cheap and squalid, and simply the Tories pushing the smear button”.

As The Slog has suggested before, it’s a good job Mandelson never became a gynaecologist, as he seems unable to tell a smear from a fact.

Fact: Nick Clegg presented himself as a fresh-faced outsider in the last TV debate. But as The Slog wrote earlier today, he is in fact a veteran Euro-trougher. Since then, the site Open Europe has published this:

‘Open Europe’s calculations show that Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg received an estimated £2.5 million in salaries and allowances over ten years working in the EU institutions. His gross salary over five years working for the Commission was calculated as €282,518 while his salary as an MEP from 1999-2004 was €484,883, based on average exchange rates at the time. Mr Clegg was also entitled to up to €52,444 in allowances as a Commission official, €1.05 million as an MEP for his travel, office and subsistence, and an additional €1 million available for his office staff at the European Parliament.

While the figures for Mr Clegg’s past salaries are known, the lack of records kept and requirements for receipts mean there is no way of knowing the exact expenditure of the allowances.’

I suppose in Mandelson’s world, this counts as being wholly honest and truthful about one’s position in this election. But for the rest of us, it suggests a bloke who’s been so long on the gravy train, he’s unlikely to have any desire to get off.

One is left wondering why on earth anyone in the media prints what this spider says any more. It’s always inaccurate, morally undirectional, and usually a lie.