With speculation mounting that Ken Clarke’s set to replace Alan Duncan in a dual shadow business secretary and shadow Mandelson role, it’s well worth reading Ben Brogan’s blog post on what Mandy makes of it all. By the sounds of it, the Spinmaster General’s already stirring up mischief; letting it be known that he’d welcome Clarke as an adversary. As Brogan writes:
The question is what Mandelson intends with all this. Would he really welcome Clarke back, perhaps because of the red-rag-waving it enables him to do over Europe? Or is he actually fearful of Clarke’s return, and trying to derail it before it’s even begun? As to the answer, I suspect only Mandy knows for sure…“[Mandelson] particularly likes the idea of a fellow pro-European lending weight to the campaign to get Britain (eventually, when the time is right and all conditions have been met bla bla) into the single currency.”
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