Oh the irony! Peter Mandelson, the politician who just will not go away, no matter how much we don’t elect him, is giving advice to parents about their ‘boomerang children’ – recently graduated adults who are living with their parents while they find a job and somewhere affordable to live. Mr Mandelson does not approve of this and has produced a helpful little leaflet explaining how parents should evict these freeloaders. Not surprisingly, he has come in for some criticism, partly because the leaflet is, well, pretty pointless really.

For a start, few parents are likely to throw their own flesh and blood out onto the streets, and also the advice given is not what you’d call useful. For example, parents are told to encourage their children to find a job, but not to encourage them too much, in case it hurts their feelings. Parents are also warned against building up unrealistic expectations in their offspring with the advice:

“Some will make it as actors and film scriptwriters but many just waste away the years.”

Very true! It’s always a good idea to encourage your children to forget whatever it was they spent all those years studying to do. Who needs dreams when working at McDonalds is now considered a career?

Some people have also questioned whether he should even be giving parenting advice when he doesn’t actually have any children. These people are missing a very important point: Mandy is speaking from personal experience.

It’s true Mandelson doesn’t have any children, but he was once a child, and is now relaying what he feels are the finer points of his upbringing. You see, Mandy’s parents wasted absolutely no time in throwing him out and encouraging him to stand on his own two feet. In fact, they didn’t even wait until he’d graduated! Young Peter’s eviction from the family home happened at the tender age of eight when he was sent to live in the garden shed where he survived on a diet of seed potatoes and potting compost. This may sound harsh, but be honest, could you sleep if that creepy, little weirdo was prowling around your house like a reject from the Village of the Dammed*? His parents had no other option, it was either the shed, or a trip to Transylvania to release him into the wild in the hope he’d find his own kind.

So there you have it: parents, evict your children, they too can grow up to be just like Peter Mandelson – isn’t that what you always wanted for them?

Next time: A discussion of David Cameron’s leaflet, ‘Wolves Raising Children’, asking is it a kinder alternative to public school?’

* It’s rumoured that he got his current job by using this aversion to sharing a roof with him to his advantage. The story goes: he turned up at the Browns and refused to leave until Gordon gave in to his demands. Gordon tried to hold out, but by dinner time, Sarah and the children were so scared they hid in the cupboard under the stairs, while Alistair Darling+ was whining pitifully and chasing his own eyebrows, so he was forced to acquiesce.  Apparently, it was a horrendous experience, and Sarah Brown still shudders when she recalls the way Mandy said thank you when she offered him a cup of tea.

+ He lives with them, he’s got his own bowl, beanbag and even a nice little kennel, but he only ever uses that when he does something naughty such as: disagreeing about the economy, or trying to think up his own financial strategy.  If you’re ever in the vicinity of Downing Street early in the morning, you can see Gordon walking him, it’s a lovely sight; Gordon striding purposefully while tiny Alistair scampers happily along at his side, avoiding the urge to sniff other politicians’ bottoms in the hope he’ll be rewarded with an economic reform of his very own.

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