We stand with Mandelson

I know this might not come naturally to Coffeee Housers but we all really should rally to Peter Mandelson’s defence. Nicolas Sazkozy is attacking Mandelson because he is a free trader, or at least more of one than the French president. Sarko also worries that Mandelson might be about to put the skids under Europe’s absurd system of out relief to farmers at the WTO talks.

Protectionism is on the march at the moment, it offers false comfort to workers made nervous by the global economy. Unscrupulous politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are happy to peddle this snake oil despite knowing that more protectionism would actually restrict global growth. One of the worst recent examples of this was Barack Obama’s behaviour during the Democratic primaries. He was prepared to be a total demagogue about trade in an attempt to appeal to working class voters in mid-Western manufacturing states.