MAIL ONLINE: The sumptuous home of financier Jacob Rothschild, Waddesdon Manor, has long been famed as one of Britain's most magnificent country houses.
But for all its splendour and beauty, the estate has this week been associated with an extraordinary weekend shooting party which symbolises the decadence, corruption and moral collapse of modern British socialism.
No novelist would have dared to invent such an occasion. The host was a leading member of the world's richest and most famous banking dynasty. The guests included the son of a bloodthirsty and oil-rich Arab dictator, and the discredited wife of a former British prime minister.
And totally at home in all this gilded opulence was the remarkable figure of Lord Mandelson, former Young Communist, far Left activist, major player in three successive Labour election victories and right-hand man to Gordon Brown.
One might have expected such a figure to have been repelled by so much opulence and wealth. Instead, Mandelson clearly revels in it. The drab lives of the hard-working men and women who placed their faith in Labour at three consecutive general elections hold no appeal to him.
Mandelson now only seems truly at home in grand country houses or on the yachts of billionaires such as his Russian oligarch friend Oleg Deripaska, whose guest he was during the summer of 2008.
The truth is that his attendance at a shooting party with Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi's son is a perfect parable of the decadent Left's embrace of everything it claims to despise.
Nor is Mandelson an exception. Practically every member of Tony Blair's Cabinet which took office in 1997 has since sold out to wealth and power.
Blair himself is a perfect example. Since leaving office, he has become a popular member of the international plutocracy; a consultant to an investment bank who has earned an estimated £15 million since leaving Downing Street.
While at No 10, Blair was shamefully attracted to extremely rich men. On one occasion, government policy was even changed after the tycoon Bernie Ecclestone donated £1 million to the Labour Party.
Peerages were for sale under his government, while his wife Cherie blatantly profiteered from her status of First Lady by accepting free gifts and discounts from retailers. >>> Peter Oborne | Friday, November 27, 2009
