Super Blair's Big Mistake; He Remains Unscathed by the Damning Butler Report On Iraq Intelligence, the Hutton Inquiry and Falling Votes. So Why Did Tony Blair Risk Resurrecting Peter Mandelson Now, Asks Westminster Editor James Cusick

Summary

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Three months after he was forced to resign from the Cabinet for the second time in three years, Peter Mandelson, the exterior designer of New Labour, confessed that everyone in active politics should be conscious of what he called "their sell-by date". Three years on from that confession Mandelson is this weekend preparing to repackage himself again, this time as a fresh, sellable, premium European product.

Past his sell-by date? Mandelson now can't bring himself to admit he contemplated such a thing. "I hope people will say, love him or loathe him, he is a strong guy and we need a person to bat for a strong Britain," he told a television interviewer. The problem for Mandelson is that precious few in the Labour Party love him. And the legions who loathe him do so with such enmity that the announcement by Tony Blair that he had nominated the Hartlepool MP as the UK's new commissioner in Brussels was greeted with immediate cries of despair and disgust.

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Super Blair's Big Mistake; He Remains Unscathed by the Damning Butler Report On Iraq Intelligence, the Hutton Inquiry and Falling Votes. So Why Did Tony Blair Risk Resurrecting Peter Mandelson Now, Asks Westminster Editor James Cusick

The Glasgow Pollok MP, Ian Davidson - no fan of Europe and a believer in international conspiratorial forces out to create a superstate - branded the appointment by Blair as "appalling", adding: "This will be seen as an example of arrogance by New Labour, bringing in somebody twice resigned, seen as a crony of the Prime Minister, deeply unpopular in the Labour Party."

Alan Simpson, the Labour MP for Nottingham South, and regarded by Downing Street as one of the "usual suspects" likely to kick out at Blair given any opportunity, said: "The criticism of this govern...

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