Love him or loathe him, Littlejohn has hit the spot today

Richard Littlejohn on Gordon Brown's appointment of Peter Mandelson (or Lord Mandy as he will become) as 'Business Secretary':

Malignant, malevolent, mendacious - this creep is a cancer on British life

Trust me, this was the act of a madman. Brown came into office promising to draw a line under the spin, sleaze, dishonesty and division of the Blair years. It was always nonsense, but enough people fell for it. Yet he has now recalled into his Cabinet the living embodiment of all that is rotten and disreputable about New Labour.

Short of Call Me Dave making Jeffrey-Archer his new Tory Party treasurer, it is difficult to think of a more outrageous political appointment.

Putting this odious, discredited creep back into one of the great offices of state is an affront to any definition of decency.

The only consolation to be drawn when Blair handed Mandelson a first-class ticket on the Brussels gravy train was that at least the most malignant tumour on Britain’s body politic had been cut out.

No one, with the possible exception of Alastair Campbell, has done more to poison the well of public life. Campbell was the sewer, but Mandelson was pure sewage.