Conservative leader David Cameron used a speech at the Foreign Press Association yesterday to criticise Peter Mandelson’s record as trade commissioner:

I don’t believe that Peter Mandelson (the EU trade commissioner) is currently taking the right approach towards globalisation. There’s a stop-the-world-I-want-to-get-off mentality in too much of what he does. The role for the British government is to argue in Brussels that we should be promoting free trade and open markets, and making the best of globalisation rather than believing it’s going to be the end of us.

Peter Mandelson is hopelessly out of his depth, giving in to the protectionists at the slightest pressure. He has gone totally native; his legacy will be a triple betrayal: of British interests, of the developing world who so desperately want the end of the Common Agricultural Policy, and of Europe itself which risks failing to come to grips with the challenges of India and China. We can only hope that his successor is made of sterner stuff.