According to Simon Walters in today’s Mail on Sunday, Peter Mandelson is regaling ministerial colleagues with a cruel witticism at Gordon Brown’s expense, suggesting that Tony Blair was a better Prime Minister because he was “less paranoid”:
“If Tony and Gordon were stranded on a desert island surrounded by sharks, Tony would charm the sharks to carry him to safety. Gordon would sit there raging: ‘Who sent the sharks?’”
Paranoia is generally understood to be a delusional condition in which the affected individual believes he is being persecuted.
If Lord Mandelson is indeed doing the rounds with such an unpleasant joke, it seems to me that any such belief on the Prime Minister’s part would not be delusional at all.
