UK News

Mandelson shows Brown the way

There haven’t been many highlights from the podium at this year’s Labour party conference so far, but business minister Peter Mandelson pulled the cat out of the bag. A rip-snorting rouser of a speech on Monday — full of gags and inspirational lines — has energised the party faithful and left commentators drooling. It was just what Labour needed given all the negativity around the party at the moment. Way behind in the polls, scrambling for policies that will capture the public mood and seemingly doomed to defeat at the next election to the opposition Conservatives, a week-long conference in sunny Brighton could easily turn into a painfully long few days. Prime Minister Gordon Brown takes to the stage on Tuesday and must follow Mandelson’s lead if he is to convince the doubters in his own party and beyond that he has what it takes to reverse Labour’s fortunes. Brown is not known for his imaginative speeches but he needs to find one now. He did it last year — when plotters in his party wanted him out. Can he do it again?

Mandelson’s scare tactic gives glimpse of election battle

 Peter Mandelson gave a glimpse of Labour’s strategy in the next election on Monday, trying to scare voters from choosing the Conservatives by forecasting they would take the country back to the harsh days of the early 1980s.

    The business secretary invoked former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her hardline ministers as he sought to portray the modern Conservatives as unchanged from their predecessors who broke the unions and shrunk the state in Thatcher’s Conservative revolution after 1979.

    In a speech to the Labour thinktank Progress, Mandelson raised the spectre of figures loathed by the Left such as Norman Tebbit, the Conservative cabinet minister famous for recounting how his unemployed father had “got on his bike” to find work in the 1930s.

    Mandelson’s speech sounded like the opening salvo in the phoney war leading up to the general election that Prime Minister Gordon Brown must call by next June.

    Polls show Labour, whose decade of boom culminated in the worst bust in post-war British history, has a mountain to climb if it is to cling to power.

    In a shift of strategy, the Labour government now acknowledges there will be pressures on public spending once Britain is through the recession.

    Mandelson said Britain will have to “prioritise and economise”, contrasting this with the deep cuts he says the Conservatives are eager to make.

from The Great Debate UK:

Vauxhall future is headache for Mandelson

- John Bowker is Reuters’ UK transport and defence correspondent. The opinions expressed are his own -

Lord Mandelson was in buoyant mood on Thursday night.

The future ownership of British car-maker Vauxhall had finally been decided. U.S. giant General Motors agreed to sell its European unit -- which includes Vauxhall -- to Canadian car parts maker Magna and its Russian backers. According to Mandelson, this was good news for the Vauxhall's 5,000 British workers as it removed the uncertainty over their futures. Everyone can get back to work making cars and live happily ever after.

But for Mandelson the game is only just beginning. He is putting on a brave face now but he must know it is not that simple. He says Magna has assured him to his face that the British plants in Luton and Ellesmere Port will remain open. But for how long? He cannot say. And at what cost? Again -- the details are yet to be finalised.

The union leader at Ellesmere Port tells me that an earlier draft of Magna's business plan called for 830 job cuts at the plant, about 40 percent of the work force. This will be tied to lower output and changes to the pension scheme. Meanwhile, both Ellesmere Port and Luton have no entitlement to build the newer 'green' cars that have become a staple condition for future state support. Ellesmere Port will build the new Astra from this month, but what about next decade?

It is hard to overstate how much political wrangling has gone into the GM deal. It has involved Washington, Belgium, Spain, Poland -- but particularly Germany, where around half of GM Europe's workers are based. Magna secured Germany's support by promising not to close any German plants -- so who will take up the slack?

Mandelson is obliged to provide state support to Magna in return for keeping Vauxhall afloat. But there is no way the deal will go through without at least some job losses - possibly many hundreds. That means the Business Secretary will be putting up millions of pounds of taxpayers money to support a company intent on cutting British jobs. Where's the fairness in that?

Is powerful Mandy talking up the euro?

When Prime Minister Gordon Brown reshuffled his cabinet last week, fending off a challenge to his authority, a significant outcome was the creation of one of the most powerful ministerial jobs Britain has seen in years.

Peter Mandelson, a former European commissioner who has twice served in British governments in the past and twice been forced to resign, was reconfirmed as secretary of state for business, but also given greatly expanded authorities that make him a powerful if unofficial number two to Brown.

Much fun has been made of Mandelson’s new title, which because he has been elevated to the House of Lords in order to serve in the cabinet now officially reads as: