Mandelson means business
Peter Mandelson has a reputation as a strategist and a schemer. We should be pleased the Department of Business has a man with such talents in charge.
The name of the Department of Trade & Industry has changed since Mandelson was last in charge, but so has his experience. Four years as European trade commissioner and a key involvement in the World Trade Organisation’s efforts to negotiate a new round of tariff and quota liberation have given him a much-needed international dimension.
Of course he has been brought home to rescue the Labour party, but British business should be a winner too. The party’s chances of winning the next election may have risen enormously now he is back, but they remain low. If his tenure as business secretary is limited however, he would not have kept his Brussels job after a Labour defeat either.
A strong and active leader at the Department of Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform is vital now the financial crisis has become a slump on the high street and in factories. The important recession is in real business, not the City.
John Hutton was no failure as business secretary but the speed of the downturn in manufacturing and services requires an urgent response, a global context and the clout within cabinet to achieve results. Mandelson may be disliked inside and outside his own party, but his record as trade commissioner was strong.
And appointing such high-powered business ambassadors as former BP boss Lord Browne, ex-HSBC chairman Sir John Bond, Standard Chartered’s Mervyn Davies and Lloyds TSB’s chairman Sir Victor Blank suggests the UK’s corporate strength is high on the government’s agenda.
Obviously hiring such a manipulator as Mandelson has dangers. There was nothing wrong with borrowing from fellow cabinet minister Geoffrey Robinson in the 1990s but it was a serious conflict of interest for Mandelson’s department to be formally investigating a collapsed company once run by that minister – even though Robinson was legitimately cleared. The Hinduja passport affair had no substance but allowed Mandelson’s enemies to force him out of cabinet a second time.
There is scope for conflict with Alistair Darling if Mandelson (once a junior economist) tries to extend his brief to Treasury matters, but with the banking system so precarious, business and financial affairs are melding. If Mandelson ups Darling’s game, Britain will have a stronger chancellor too.
The mistake is to think Mandelson plays politics. There is no playing: this is the real ruthless thing. But desperate times require desperate measures and these times are desperate and business should be pleased to have such an unlikely champion.
