Monday, September 05, 2005
LexisNexis(TM) Academic - Document
Copyright 2005 The Financial Times Limited
Financial Times (London, England)
August 27, 2005 Saturday
London Edition 1
SECTION: COMMENT & ANALYSIS; Pg. 9
LENGTH: 1097 words
HEADLINE: A weaver of controversies MAN IN THE NEWS PETER MANDELSON: The embattled EU trade chief is determined to show he is a figure of substance, writes George Parker
BYLINE: By GEORGE PARKER
BODY:
Peter Mandelson left for his summer break in Italy in high spirits, the hero of Europe's shrinking garments industry after persuading China to limit its textile exports.
The European Union trade chief returns to work on Monday pilloried by retailers for ÂÂdisrupting their purchasing cycle, denying shoppers cheap jeans and T-shirts and stripping the shelves of Christmas bra-and-knicker sets.
Mr Mandelson has become intimately acquainted with the fine line between political success and low farce during a turbulent 20-year career at the heart of British and, now, European Union politics. Twice forced to resign from the British cabinet after becoming embroiled in scandals, Mr Mandelson was last November given a third political life by Tony Blair, the man he calls "my friend".
Today the 51-year-old former Labour MP is Britain's sole EU commissioner, presiding over the world's biggest trading bloc. "It is incomparable to anything I have ever done before," Mr Mandelson says. His friends say it is his chance to become a serious player on the world stage. But if Mr Blair thought Mr Mandelson would leave controversy behind by swapping the Westminster hothouse for talks on blousequotas in Brussels he was wrong.
In less than a year in Brussels he has fallen out in spectacular fashion with his opposite number in Washington, clashed with colleagues at the European Commission and is now trying to deconstruct Europe's pullover mountain. A faceless Eurocrat Mr Mandelson is not. One friend, the author Robert Harris, once said that, with his love of the high life and high society, he is "too colourful, exotic and clever for his own good". The question posed by Mr Mandelson's critics is whether the former "King of Spin" has the aptitude or the patience to make a success of perhaps the biggest job of his life.
Peter Mandelson was born into a comfortable Labour-supportingfamily in London in 1953, the grandson of the cabinet minister Herbert Morrison. But the social democratic party he helped to fashion in the 1980s and 1990s marked a decisive break from the Labour party of Morrison's generation. Today he is viewed in France as a raving "neo-liberal".
Mr Mandelson, as Labour's media chief, helped to lay the ground for Mr Blair's election as party leader in 1994. The party loosened its ties with the trade unions and embraced the private sector and the EU. Under Mr Mandelson, Labour's image softened from Red Flag socialism to Red Rose New Labour. Along with Mr Blair and Gordon Brown - Mr Blair's presumed successor and now Mr Mandelson's arch-enemy - he is credited with masterminding the party's return to power in 1997.
Mr Mandelson's ruthless control of the New Labour "message" and proximity to Mr Blair earned him the nickname "Prince of Darkness" from Labour MPs and the media. Nobody doubted his ability to burnish the image of the party and prime minister, but Mr Mandelson was careless of his own reputation. His two stints in the cabinet were measured in months. He resigned as trade secretary in 1998 over an undisclosed home loan from a ministerial colleague; his spell as Northern Ireland secretary ended in 2001 when he failed to squash claims that he helped an Indian businessmen with a British passport application after the man had given money to the Millennium Dome project. He was cleared of wrongdoing.
Mr Mandelson clung to hopes of a third return in a Blair cabinet but finally accepted the end of his British political career when he moved to Brussels last year. His reputation for political image-making and spin followed him, an aspect of his political past exploited by Robert Zoellick, the former US trade representative. The two men fell out as they attempted to resolve the aircraft subsidy row between Boeing and Airbus, with Mr Zoellick slamming down the telephone and opening up the biggest EU-US trade dispute in years. Mr Zoellick claimed Mr Mandelson had not been frank about his negotiating position on public subsidies to Airbus. "You don't have to spin," he said. Mr Mandelson says Mr Zoellick later apologised, but the strains to US-EU trade relations are still evident.
His critics inside the Commission question how Mr Mandelson, a liberal Brit, could have ended up with a worse relationship with the US than his predecessor, Pascal Lamy, a French socialist. "I think he probably over-estimated his capacity to deliver on the US-EU relationship because he was a Brit," said one. "He now realises that the relationship is an economic one, above all."
Mr Mandelson's supporters claim their man is the victim of an intractable battle between Airbus and Boeing for world market share, the stakes raised during the US election. "It's not really a trade dispute at all," says one. Mr Mandelson admits he takes a more political approach to trade negotiations than Mr Lamy - a career bureaucrat - but says spin, or "media relations" as he calls it, plays only a tiny part in his new world.
Sir Michael Scholar, Mr Mandelson's senior civil servant at the UK's department of trade and industry, dismisses any suggestion that the trade commissioner hates detail. He says the minister engaged with experts and listened to advice. "When he left after five months there was an enormous sense of disappointment. He was . . . very clear about what he wanted and pretty successful at getting it done."
Although Mr Mandelson describes his Brussels job as "fascinating", he is often frustrated at trying to create a trade policy acceptable to EU countries ranging from free-trade Sweden to protectionist France. He has yet to win unqualified support within his own department and Jose Manuel Barroso, the Commission president, clashed with him after Mr Mandelson resisted new textile quotas on China. He speaks of the "extreme public fears and political pressures" that forced him to back down - notably from the "textilians" of France and Italy.
He admits the problems for retailers are "a serious glitch" but regards the deal with China as a triumph. But the bigger tests for Mr Mandelson will come in the next few months - trying to stop the Airbus-Boeing dispute from escalating and working with the US to unlock the Doha world trade round.
With Europe gripped by low growth, high unemployment and fears about the economic rise of China, Mr Mandelson admits it is not the easiest time to push a free trade agenda. But those British punters who placed bets last year on him being driven out of his job by now will be disappointed that he is still in place and that he fully intends to use his five-year term to prove he is a man of substance, not spin.
LOAD-DATE: August 26, 2005
Financial Times (London, England)
August 27, 2005 Saturday
London Edition 1
SECTION: COMMENT & ANALYSIS; Pg. 9
LENGTH: 1097 words
HEADLINE: A weaver of controversies MAN IN THE NEWS PETER MANDELSON: The embattled EU trade chief is determined to show he is a figure of substance, writes George Parker
BYLINE: By GEORGE PARKER
BODY:
Peter Mandelson left for his summer break in Italy in high spirits, the hero of Europe's shrinking garments industry after persuading China to limit its textile exports.
The European Union trade chief returns to work on Monday pilloried by retailers for ÂÂdisrupting their purchasing cycle, denying shoppers cheap jeans and T-shirts and stripping the shelves of Christmas bra-and-knicker sets.
Mr Mandelson has become intimately acquainted with the fine line between political success and low farce during a turbulent 20-year career at the heart of British and, now, European Union politics. Twice forced to resign from the British cabinet after becoming embroiled in scandals, Mr Mandelson was last November given a third political life by Tony Blair, the man he calls "my friend".
Today the 51-year-old former Labour MP is Britain's sole EU commissioner, presiding over the world's biggest trading bloc. "It is incomparable to anything I have ever done before," Mr Mandelson says. His friends say it is his chance to become a serious player on the world stage. But if Mr Blair thought Mr Mandelson would leave controversy behind by swapping the Westminster hothouse for talks on blousequotas in Brussels he was wrong.
In less than a year in Brussels he has fallen out in spectacular fashion with his opposite number in Washington, clashed with colleagues at the European Commission and is now trying to deconstruct Europe's pullover mountain. A faceless Eurocrat Mr Mandelson is not. One friend, the author Robert Harris, once said that, with his love of the high life and high society, he is "too colourful, exotic and clever for his own good". The question posed by Mr Mandelson's critics is whether the former "King of Spin" has the aptitude or the patience to make a success of perhaps the biggest job of his life.
Peter Mandelson was born into a comfortable Labour-supportingfamily in London in 1953, the grandson of the cabinet minister Herbert Morrison. But the social democratic party he helped to fashion in the 1980s and 1990s marked a decisive break from the Labour party of Morrison's generation. Today he is viewed in France as a raving "neo-liberal".
Mr Mandelson, as Labour's media chief, helped to lay the ground for Mr Blair's election as party leader in 1994. The party loosened its ties with the trade unions and embraced the private sector and the EU. Under Mr Mandelson, Labour's image softened from Red Flag socialism to Red Rose New Labour. Along with Mr Blair and Gordon Brown - Mr Blair's presumed successor and now Mr Mandelson's arch-enemy - he is credited with masterminding the party's return to power in 1997.
Mr Mandelson's ruthless control of the New Labour "message" and proximity to Mr Blair earned him the nickname "Prince of Darkness" from Labour MPs and the media. Nobody doubted his ability to burnish the image of the party and prime minister, but Mr Mandelson was careless of his own reputation. His two stints in the cabinet were measured in months. He resigned as trade secretary in 1998 over an undisclosed home loan from a ministerial colleague; his spell as Northern Ireland secretary ended in 2001 when he failed to squash claims that he helped an Indian businessmen with a British passport application after the man had given money to the Millennium Dome project. He was cleared of wrongdoing.
Mr Mandelson clung to hopes of a third return in a Blair cabinet but finally accepted the end of his British political career when he moved to Brussels last year. His reputation for political image-making and spin followed him, an aspect of his political past exploited by Robert Zoellick, the former US trade representative. The two men fell out as they attempted to resolve the aircraft subsidy row between Boeing and Airbus, with Mr Zoellick slamming down the telephone and opening up the biggest EU-US trade dispute in years. Mr Zoellick claimed Mr Mandelson had not been frank about his negotiating position on public subsidies to Airbus. "You don't have to spin," he said. Mr Mandelson says Mr Zoellick later apologised, but the strains to US-EU trade relations are still evident.
His critics inside the Commission question how Mr Mandelson, a liberal Brit, could have ended up with a worse relationship with the US than his predecessor, Pascal Lamy, a French socialist. "I think he probably over-estimated his capacity to deliver on the US-EU relationship because he was a Brit," said one. "He now realises that the relationship is an economic one, above all."
Mr Mandelson's supporters claim their man is the victim of an intractable battle between Airbus and Boeing for world market share, the stakes raised during the US election. "It's not really a trade dispute at all," says one. Mr Mandelson admits he takes a more political approach to trade negotiations than Mr Lamy - a career bureaucrat - but says spin, or "media relations" as he calls it, plays only a tiny part in his new world.
Sir Michael Scholar, Mr Mandelson's senior civil servant at the UK's department of trade and industry, dismisses any suggestion that the trade commissioner hates detail. He says the minister engaged with experts and listened to advice. "When he left after five months there was an enormous sense of disappointment. He was . . . very clear about what he wanted and pretty successful at getting it done."
Although Mr Mandelson describes his Brussels job as "fascinating", he is often frustrated at trying to create a trade policy acceptable to EU countries ranging from free-trade Sweden to protectionist France. He has yet to win unqualified support within his own department and Jose Manuel Barroso, the Commission president, clashed with him after Mr Mandelson resisted new textile quotas on China. He speaks of the "extreme public fears and political pressures" that forced him to back down - notably from the "textilians" of France and Italy.
He admits the problems for retailers are "a serious glitch" but regards the deal with China as a triumph. But the bigger tests for Mr Mandelson will come in the next few months - trying to stop the Airbus-Boeing dispute from escalating and working with the US to unlock the Doha world trade round.
With Europe gripped by low growth, high unemployment and fears about the economic rise of China, Mr Mandelson admits it is not the easiest time to push a free trade agenda. But those British punters who placed bets last year on him being driven out of his job by now will be disappointed that he is still in place and that he fully intends to use his five-year term to prove he is a man of substance, not spin.
LOAD-DATE: August 26, 2005
# posted by Eastlaw @ 11:47 PM 
