Former business secretary's 'industrial activism' provides inspiration for Vince Cable and Ed Miliband
The political class held its collective breath when Peter Mandelson made his third comeback in 2008 after Gordon Brown summoned him back from Brussels to join the cabinet.
So Westminster will be beside itself with excitement when it realises that Lord Mandelson is embarking on a fourth comeback. But this one has a twist. Mandelson is being summoned back by opponents and, as befits an international businessman with a swanky "portfolio" lifestyle, he doesn't actually have to do anything.
Vince Cable's leaked letter, in which the business secretary complained that the coalition lacks a "compelling vision" for a growth strategy, could have been written by Mandelson. Cable's call for a "stronger steer from government" on identifying, and then supporting, key technologies is almost identical to the "industrial activism" championed by Mandelson after the financial crash. Mandelson was succeeded as business secretary by Cable after the 2010 general election.
If Cable's aping of Mandelson is a surprise, then how about the decision of an even greater foe to seek inspiration from one of the main founders of New Labour? Ed Miliband, who regards Mandelson as a rather snotty sixth former, paid warm tribute to the way in which he revived the department of business, innovation and skills. In his speech to the EEF conference on Tuesday, the Labour leader said:
If we want to understand that there is a difference between protectionism and patriotism we should compare what happened in the car industry in Britain in the 1970s with the recent recession. In the seventies, we did prop up loss-making lame ducks.
Thirty years later the government provided support, but not to prop up companies that were uncompetitive, but to prevent the recession destroying fundamentally healthy British plants. That was because government, unions and management worked together and Peter Mandelson recognised the need for a change in attitude.
We see the response today; the new Nissan investment is a culmination of that approach. The Business Department stopped being a sleepy backwater and became a great office of state.
What's the lesson I draw from this? To work, an active industrial strategy must have real vision, real drive right across government. And I don't think the government gets it.
That was quite a tribute by Miliband. He was furious during the 2010 leadership contest when Mandelson warned that the younger Miliband was in danger of killing New Labour. Ed Miliband soon realised that Mandelson's intervention was a gift. David Miliband takes the same view – he believes Mandelson's intervention deprived him of the Labour leadership.
Perhaps it will now only be a matter of time before Mandelson stages his fifth comeback. George Osborne, who has always regarded Mandelson with an edgy respect, is said to see him as a worthy successor to Pascal Lamy as director-general of the World Trade Organisation.