Now that St. Tony of Albion and Bananaman have been seen their EU top-job ambitions dashed, the UK government is touting Baron Mandelson of Foy in the County of Herefordshire and Hartlepool in the County of Durham, or Lord Fondlebum of Rio to his friends, as the EU's high representative for foreign affairs.

Many instinctive bloggertarians will be horrified that the minister, who, it will be pointed out, had to resign twice in disgrace, is about to get himself a no-doubt well paid position in Brussels just as the Labour ship he helped navigate is crashing catastrophically onto the rocks.


I don't think this is fair; Mandelson's record is one of a loyal Lieutenant calmly suggesting to Captain Blair, and Later Brown, that "perhaps that is not the right way, sir"; the difference is when Brown took over, the power sent him almost completely insane, and nothing Mandelson could do would stop an increasingly delusional captain steering straight for every rock he couldn't see, hurling Nokias at anyone who dared point out the catastrophic policy failures and upcoming cliffs. Brown is determined to destroy the ship, and go down with it. Fondlebum cannot be held entirely responsible for the disaster of the Labour government, as he is one of the only competent individuals in it. He is also, surprisingly for a former communist, an idealogical fellow traveller with those of us on the right. As EU Commissioner, his sterling defence of free trade and against French protectionism won him few friends, but was the right thing to do. He certainly earned my respect.

Mandelson is an extremely astute political operator, and one with the potential to advance the cause of free trade within the EU and world wide. He has deal-making experience from his time as Northern Ireland secretary, and was able to bring those two warring tribes around a table and thrash out a deal on power sharing and the thorny issue of policing. I can think of few people who would do a better job advancing world trade talks, and persuading America and China that tariff wars are not the way forward. The left think he's one of them, but actually he'd be a globalist's Manchurian candidate.

A Very British Dude enthusiastically supports Peter Mandelson for EU High Representative. And it's not entirely because I want the most competent Labour politician out of the way during the upcoming election campaign, though that is a clear ancillary benefit.