It's Not Who You Know, It's Competence and Open Negotiation

Peter Mandelson's efforts to 'act' for Vauxhall are suddenly being reported in the papers. He has had 'substantial telephone calls' with important people and made 'clear demands'. He has even 'hinted' at printing some more money to 'aid' Vauxhall despite 'Britain's' disapproval of state aid to bail out failing industrial and manufacturing sectors. There have even been meetings with 'key players'. The unelected Industry Minister clearly feels the need to have been seen putting himself about recently.

It's all displacement activity. The utter irrelevance of the UK in coping with the fall out from the collapse of General Motors is what is also clear. All of GMs operations in Europe are now under Opel. Even formal calls from member states with GM Europe plants, for European Union level involvement in negotiations are going unanswered.

So much easier to look useful and spin your line when you espouse an understanding of holding an ostensibly democratic office as knowing who to call and having the right contacts, rather than knowing what you are doing and negotiating openly and publicly under the rules for an industrial solution to an industrial problem involving hundreds of thousands of jobs and lives.