The Tories must remember Mandelson is mortal

David

Um, the trap is surely to get the Tories talking about the Euro again? You know, save the pound, which proved so attractive last time, further EU splits etc etc

Chris

Exactly. William Hague proved what a massive vote loser the Tory approach to Europe was, but they haven't learned the lesson. For the government to start pushing the euro would be a master stroke, destroying the opposition easily. Gordon's too dim and arrogant to realise it, but Mandelson will have got it.

Andy Leeds

Mandelson is a really nasty bit of work. Time the Tories and the press dug properly into his relationship with Derapaska and Rothschild. As to him being an 'intellectually confident figure' he is very second rate. After all this is the man who couldn't even fill in a mortgage application correctly. The only difference between then and now is that Mandy is rich, but it will all end in tears just like before.

Jonesy

Save the pound, lose the election.

David Cameron whispers it to himself every night before bed.

strapworld

David and Chris are right. The Conservatives should just say. "We would hold a binding referendum on joining the Euro or not. The people can trust the conservatives in our promise that they will have a voice on this important issue!""

Unlike Labour and the Liberal Democrats who walk away from their promise to the electorate to hold referendums on the EU.

In relation to Mandleson...he is a twice failed minister, a man who obviously is a legend in his own mind!

He WILL fall again...it is just a matter of time.

He is UNelected and speaks for nobody but himself. It just shows the barren ground which is Gordon Brown's brain!

BUT, I will say again and again. Cameron has got to get street fighters around him AND people like John Gaunt/Richard Littlejohn who can and do understand what the great British people are thinking. CAMERON needs to start fighting.

He shut another open door this week over the Green affair. It is now a partisan affair, sadly.
with the government hijacking the speakers committee of wise parliamentarians! How can the Tories and Lib Dems accept that?

This was a stich-up from start to finish and the Tories had better wise up quickly.

Perennial

I once heard that Mandelson walked out of a BBC interview when he did not like a particular line of questioning. Apparently, it was never shown because they (the BBC) did not want to upset the Government.

Ian C

"For the government to start pushing the euro would be a master stroke"

Give Brown some credit for not being entirely stupid - it was he who prevented the whole Euro entry project at a time that we could easily have pretended to "qualify".

Today and for the next decade there is no qualification possible with the sort of debt and budget deficits we will have. The enforced re-balancing of the economy that is now plainly needed means, for any one with an ounce of common sense, let-alone knowledge of the economy, the last thing the economy needs is a return to fixed exchange rates.

By then the Euro is AS likely to have collapsed anyway. This is Mandelson mischief and needs ignoring.

If what you say is true, James, about the Tory panic whenever Mandelson sticks his head up, they should shoot it off as you say.

Jeremy

I agree with you, James. Mandy is not only mortal, he is also vulnerable. You have only to take him on, to win. He's another one who prefers creeping around the back stairs because he is simply not that good in a straight fight.

The Euro is a votewinner amongst the British - and the Titanic flew to the moon.

Publius

This adulation of and fear of Mandelson just highlights the weakness of those who are in awe of him. He is not some intellectual giant, any more than Brown is. People need to start playing him at his own game. Any decent person can see him for what he is.
I suspect part of Mandelson's apparent strength is that he knows he has nothing to lose. He's a Lord. He has a fat EU pension. He will make a fortune writing some ghastly book. So he will play his game for all he's worth, and if he comes unstuck he just won't care.

C Powell

"Intellectually confident"? Did you read the vacuous drivel he penned (I assume) in the Guardian yesterday? Easily demolished. What we need are some people who think in the Tory party and street fighters as Strapworld has said and, frankly, as I and many other Coffee Housers have said repeatedly over many weeks/months now.

As for Mandy, prick his self-important pomposity with wit and humour e.g. he no doubt thinks of himself as "one of the people who matter" in the UK (in Barroso's ineffably de haut en bas phrase). So at every opportunity remind him that it is the voters who are the people who count in Britain and remind him that he's been elected by nobody.

The Tories should start behaving like men not mice. All this scaredy cat nonsense is pathetic....

oldtimer

The link to Mandelson`s lecture can be found here:
http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/files/12786_031208mandelson.pdf

It is worth a read by anyone interested in contemporary UK politics because he is seeking to define the terms of the political debate and to paint the Conservatives into a corner of his own making - the "do nothing party" etc.

He bases his argument on the thesis that markets fail and that only governments can solve the consequences of these failures. And apart from a passing reference to the failure of regulatory and professional governance in the financial sector, the implication is that government gets it right. The all powerful Leviathan will provide.

The issue clearly remains where to draw the boundary line between private sector and the state. It is the context and the solutions that are different. I thought he described the new and evolving landscape very clearly - even though I do not share his belief or faith in the extent of the role or efficiency of the state.

richard bond

BROWN needed Mandelson to makeup for the other lightweights in his failed cabinet. Note the re-booking of another Labour old-timer Margaret Beckett. Jacqui Smith has been as convincing as the leaders of the American car industry with their private jets. Mandelson has experience and a neat way of dodging nasty questions. BROWN has demolished the British economy in every department. Mandelson is their as the excuser and apologist. The country is now on its side. Mandelson will be the first in to the lifeboat if we really sink into a sea of despair and depression. He only seeks personal power and fancy titles like the Baron M of Foy.......Fickle?

TrevorsDen

Tories -- hear me. FORGET THE EU, FORGET THE EURO.

Just - 'Remember the Alamo'

wonderfulforhisage

Mandy is most certainly mortal. Have a look him, Andrew Neil and Geoff Hoon on Daily Politics yesterday (17mins 56secs in). BBC iplayer. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00fzwpt/The_Daily_Politics_04_12_2008/

RODEST

It would be a sad day for Britain to loose the pound, ask any German citizen which they would prefer; the Mark or the Euro. Most will choose the Mark.

Susan Hill

THEY are all mortal. Pays to remember that from time to time.

David Parker

Promising a referendum over joining the euro would be pointless. It is clearly not the euro which concerns ordinary people, but our membership of the EU.

It would probably be fair to say that a majority of the voting public are eurosceptic in varying degrees, but certainly only a minority have any in depth understanding of exactly how much the EU affects their daily lives.

This is a result of the deliberate conspiracy between all three main parties to keep the public in ignorance and to use all means possible to prevent our membership of the EU from becoming an election issue.

We can therefore be certain that, if Cameron wins the election, apart from some token delaying gesture politics upon his part, Britain will inevitably continue along the path of ever furthur integration until it becomes part of a Single European State.

That would be fine, if this was genuinely the wish of the majority of the British population, expressed in a fair and honest in or out referendum. But, unless he seriously believed that without the committment to such a referendum, he would lose the election, Cameron would never allow this to become part of a Tory manifesto.

Whether one is pro or anti our continued membership of the EU, it should be a serious cause for concern that every time the peoples of a member state have voted, overwhelmingly, against further integration this has simply been ignored and over-ridden by the unelected rulers of the EU.

Is it too much to demand of a political party that they should offer their voters a chance to decide whether they wish to change the way in which they have been governed for centuries?

Such,however, is the arrogance of our modern professional political class that, regardless of party,they all contemptuously distrust the electorate.

HFC

If you think we need a revolution in the UK the queue starts here. Just like in a Post Ofice (if you can find one). We're too polite to start one...after you, m'dear.

Atticus Finch

Mandelson is not just mortal but he has a significant portfolio. It's remakrable he is allowed to hold such a brief and evade effective Commons scrutiny by sitting in the Lords.

The Tories should aim to keep him very busy in his day job and leave him less time to cause trouble.

Does that mean finding a more effective shadow in the Lords (or putting one there?) and a bigger hitter on the Front Bench too? If Davis is looking for a route back could BERR be for him?

Stephen

Can someone please explain why the media are so in thrall to the discredited Mandelson? I don't get it.

mitch

Just ignore mandelson for a while and he will do something monumentally stupid like the last two times.
He thinks he is clever and that is his biggest weakness.

Unsteady Eddie

Ah but it's a special sort of mortality.
The sort that can only be terminated with the aid of sunlight, garlic and a stake of solid oak.