You would have got long odds on it in the 1990s, but Peter Mandelson is now a conference darling. His hugely hammy performance delighted the hall and earned him a prolonged standing ovation.
Since he has returned to British politics, Mandelson has sought to deliver enough good lines to write his own story. He deliberately inverted Tony Blair’s quote about choosing the Labour party and rallied the audience by saying ‘If I can come back, we can come back.’ He flirted with conference before confirming that the car scrappage scheme would be extended before wrapping up with a string of attacks on the Tories and a declaration that “this election is up for grabs.”
But Mandelson’s speech actually showed what one of Labour’s biggest problems is: the lack of domestic policy message. Apart from the car scrappage scheme, there was little concrete policy in the speech.
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