I was astonished to see Peter Mandelson appointed to the cabinet by Gordon Brown this morning. Mandelson’s views on Brown are, by his own account, unprintable. When I interviewed him in Brussels about 18 months ago - just before Brown became prime minister, this is what Mandy had to say:

“Given the schism that was created between us in 1994 when Blair became leader, if I said something nice about Gordon Brown, you wouldn’t believe it. And if I said something nasty, you would just think it was a grudge. So it’s better just to say nothing.”

So what might have drawn the two men back together again? Desperation, frankly. Mandelson is desperate to get out of Brussels, which he finds boring and depressing. And given the failure of the Doha round, his job as EU trade commissioner is increasingly pointless. Continue reading "Devious, dangerous and clever - Peter Mandelson is back"

The British papers are full of excited commentary about the Glasgow East by-election and last night’s catastrophic defeat for the Labour Party. But it seems to me the really significant event in British politics yesterday was news of the theft of David Cameron’s bike.

Opinion is divided on the meaning of the bike theft. My colleague Stefan Stern thinks that the photo of the Tory leader searching for his bike made him look foolish - “That little boy lost look rather undermined the more statesman-like image he has been trying so hard to create.” On the other hand, Mary Cunningham (well-known commenter on this blog) reckons that it will cement Cameron’s image as “one of us”.

I think I’m with Mary on this one. The bike theft incident has it all. It underlines that Cameron really does cycle around London. He is also revealed as someone who shops at Tesco’s on his way home from work - and as a victim of street crime. What could be more normal than that? In fact, it’s so perfect that I wondered whether Tory Central Office might not have arranged the bicycle theft. I put this to a colleague who used to work there, who responded - “They couldn’t manage to do anything as organised as that.” Continue reading "It’s all about the bike"

I always assumed that only a small group of weirdos followed the European Union. However, I have noticed that most-read posts on my blog recently have been the ones about the Lisbon treaty. (Actually, those two statements may not be mutually exclusive).

So, I am encouraged to return to the subject.  I have recieved a response from Wolfgang Munchau, to my question about what exactly it is in Lisbon that he finds so attractive and indispensable.

Let’s start with Wolfgang. He denies my accusation that he is willing to destroy the European Union in order to save it, and writes: Continue reading "Lisbon - the debate continues"

Ths time last year, I was about to head off to Brussels to an EU summit. The top item on the agenda was an effort to rescue the European Union constitution, after defeats in the French and Dutch referendums. The result was the document that became known as the Lisbon Treaty.Now I am about to head off to Brussels for another EU crisis summit - this time designed to rescue the Lisbon Treaty after its defeat in the Irish referendum.

These people never learn. But then that is why they can keep going. They are like the proverbial goldfish, endlessly circling their bowl - and constantly surprised and delighted by the view. Continue reading "An ice cream for Ireland"

In case you haven’t been reading the papers, London has a new mayor. Boris Johnson has won. I thought that both Boris and Ken Livingstone gave unusually graceful speeches at the count last night. There was no triumphalism or buffoonery in Boris’s speech - and his tribute to Ken was generous and sounded genuine. Livingstone, for his part, avoided bitterness and accepted responsbility for his defeat - which was also generous, given that the more plausible explanation is that he was a victim of an anti-Labour rip-tide that is sweeping Britain.

The conventional explanation of Boris’s victory is that the voters are fed up. The economy is turning down, people are scared of crime and everybody in London is in a bit of gloom. This seems to me precisely wrong. Electing Boris is the act of a supremely confident city. You wouldn’t take a chance on a joker like him if you were actually worried about the future.

In my magazine piece on Boris I made much of the idea that we might not want Mayor Johnson in charge, next time terrorists hit London. But actually, I think that’s probably alarmist. Fortunately, it will not be upto the mayor to organise the city’s response to a bombing. He will have to “speak for London”. Livingstone did that well on 7/7; and I think Boris would probably rise to the occasion.

Boris Johnson is not an easy man to confront. On the eve of London’s mayoral elections we met in the coffee shop of a Marriott Hotel, just along the corridor from his campaign headquarters in County Hall. Johnson bustled in and ordered a cup of tea. He was his usual disarming, dishevelled self. But it was my task to ignore all that – and to tell him that many of his friends greet the idea of Mayor Johnson with a mixture of hilarity and horror. “They all like you,” I said wheedlingly, “but they all kind of laugh at the idea of you as mayor … They say you are incredibly disorganised.”

Johnson looked a little pained at this, and took the only line open to him – stout denial. “I think I’m extremely well organised and always have been – and achieve a fantastic amount. I work harder than almost anybody else I know. And I take these criticisms in the loving spirit with which I’m sure they’re meant.”

The remainder of this article can be read here. Please post comments below.

I am 35,000ft above Afghanistan. Beneath me, in the snowy hills, an insurgency is raging. In front of me sits David Miliband, Britain’s foreign secretary, who is leaning forward in his cream-coloured leather seat on a flight from Kabul to Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh.

“Amartya Sen is a brilliant man,” remarks Miliband. “I think his argument that there is a fusion tradition – a liberal tradition that is concerned with social justice – is right. And I admire his work on capabilities, and on freedom as capability.”

At 42, Miliband is one of Britain’s youngest-ever foreign secretaries. As his musings on Amartya Sen [the Harvard academic and Nobel prize winner] suggest, he is also one of the most intellectual. The son of Ralph Miliband, a famous Marxist academic, he worked in a think-tank before serving as head of Tony Blair’s policy unit at 10 Downing Street. With the predictable British reaction to anybody who might seem a bit clever, Miliband’s colleagues in Downing Street nicknamed him “Brains”. He entered parliament in 2001 and rose swiftly. When Tony Blair was forced to step down as Labour leader and prime minister in 2007, despairing Blairites appealed to Miliband to run for the leadership against Gordon Brown. But Miliband resisted the temptation, and was rewarded with the job of foreign secretary when Brown formed a government.

A rise from the backbenches to one of the great offices of state in just six years demands real political skill. And a couple of days in Miliband’s company have convinced me that he is much more than a jumped-up intellectual. He has a politician’s knack for rarely saying the wrong thing – which makes him a tricky man to interview when there is a tape recorder running. He is also formidably energetic. His day began with an early morning visit to British troops in Kabul. It will end with a late-evening meeting in Dhaka, with politicians and businessmen. His schedule includes no “down time”. He doesn’t seem to sleep much, and his staff claim that they have to remind him to eat.

Continue reading "Lunch with the FT: David Miliband"

When the British press get their teeth into you, it can be a nasty experience. Usually it is members of the royal family, models or footballers who get "monstered". But it can happen to government ministers too. And one who is definitely in trouble at the moment is Lord Malloch Brown - a senior minister at the Foreign Office with responsibility for Africa, Asia and the UN. I met him last night at a speech and dinner at the London School of Economics - and he was looking a little battered.

Malloch Brown was recently the subject of a cover article in the Spectator, claiming that he has become a serious embarrassment to the British government. The gist of the story was that the Americans hate him because of his behaviour at the UN, as Kofi Annan’s deputy. Malloch Brown is also accused of high living at public expense and of being too close to George Soros. Ominously for the newly ennobled minister, the support for him from his colleagues (both in public and private) has been distinctly luke-warm.

But if Malloch Brown is forced out of the government it would be ridiculous. I don’t particularly share his adoration of multilateral institutions. But if you talk to the man it is clear that he is serious, thoughtful and knowledgable. I have met so many brain-dead British foreign office ministers. It would just be absurd if - having finally found a Foreign Office minister who is clever and experienced - Britain decided to sack him.

Continue reading "Malloch Brown: A minister under fire"