"coy, kittenish, camp, and crazed"

What a fab description of Lord Mandelson by Simon Hoggart in today's Guardian.

I've always thought Mandelson to be one of the most gifted political operators of his generation. That is not to say that I admire his politics, nor yet his rather common parvenu fascination with wealth and the uber rich, nor even his near-corrupt relations with Geoffrey Robinson, or the Hinduja Brothers.

I thought that Gordon Brown bringing him back into the Cabinet was a stroke of genius, the only thing that could have topped that would've been to bring Tony Blair back.

My point is that Mandelson has managed to inject some vim and vigour into an otherwise moribund Labour Party.

And if the Tories are to be stopped from ruining Britain for the second time in a generation, then we need not only the Lib Dems but also Labour to be on top of their game.

Wise Spending?

I listened to Peter Mandelson's speech on the news and I'd like to see the government actually follow this up by commitments to scrap Trident, the ID cards, etc.

Where I do agree with him on is his analysis of the Tories' "thinly disguised zeal" for cuts.

I certainly don't want to go back to the 1980s and the "lost generation" of unemployed and the social and economic consequences that flowed therefrom.