Sending Mr Mandelson to Brussels can only add to the sum total of human happiness

I hastened last Friday to the Grays Inn studios of five news on Channel 5 to be interviewed for their 7 p.m. bulletin alongside Nick Watt of the Guardian, on the sensation of the hour. The sensation was the planned appointment of Mr Peter Mandelson as an EU commissioner in Brussels.

On time, Mr Watt and I were in place on the sofa. Channel 5’s Charlie Stayt asked us about the appointment. Starting with me, he asked what I made of his Channel’s public opinion poll which had suggested that nine out of ten respondents objected to Mr Mandelson’s appointment. I replied that this said more about the British public — most of whom object to anybody whatsoever joining the Brussels gravy train — than it did about Mandelson.

The three of us chatted about such things for a few minutes before Mr Stayt interrupted. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘but we have Peter Mandelson himself, live in a studio elsewhere in Britain, to talk to us.