Surely not Mandelson!!

For months, I've been flogging what has seemed like a dead horse called 'Rainbow Coalition'. In some quarters, I'm dismissed as a fantacist. But what drives me is a lifetime of watching the Labour Party dominate Welsh politics. How can anyone even think about propping them up in power after next May. For how long is Welsh politics going to be weighed down under the yoke of 'One Party Rule'. And I'm directing this question at fellow AMs, Peter Black, Kirsty Williams, Rhodri Glyn Thomas, Leanne Wood, Dai Lloyd, Janet Ryder, Helen Mary Jones and any of the other rabid anti-Tories. The thought of a 'Rainbow Coalition' does not appeal to me either - but its a lot better than the alternative.

Anyway , my point today is that this sort of approach is as nothing to what is going on at Westminster, if Peter Oborne in the Daily Mail is to believed.

Most fascinating of all is the evolving connection between David Cameron and Peter Mandelson, European Commissioner and the architect of New Labour. Cameron has met Mandelson twice in the past two months, once for a long private meeting in Brussels and then for a brief but cheerful chat at the Davos World Economic Forum.

Relations are more than professionally cordial: they are warm and friendly. I have heard reliable accounts of Mandelson's table talk from Brussels on the subject of the Tory leader.

Although distressed by Cameron's obstinate Euroscepticism, the Commissioner is otherwise emphatic in his approval, comparing him to the young Tony Blair of 11 or 12 years ago when Labour was in opposition.


Now, as for Cameron's other targets (according to Oborne, who is usually well informed) David Laws or anyone else from the Vince Cable school of Lib Demary, I could accept. Even David Owen, Lord Split himself would be ok. But Peter Mandelson? Surely not! Who next? Livingston, Opik, Polly Toynbee? Surely, Oborne had been on the sherberts when he wrote that piece. What I've been suggesting in Wales is no more than a 'tad controversial' compared with the 'revolution' a Mandelson defection would represent. We do live in interesting times.