Organizational Behaviour

PETER Mandelson, the European Union trade commissioner and key architect of the New Labour movement that swept Tony Blair to power, appears pretty worried about protectionism in Europe and America, as the prospect of a global downturn combines with a widespread sense among voters that the global financial system is out of control.

Mr Mandelson is a complex character, and is not everyone's cup of tea in his native Britain, where he twice had to resign from the government under a cloud. But this blogger would argue he has flourished in the ideological arena of EU trade politics, where he has often had to fight for liberalism and openness from first principles.

In a speech he is to give in Cambridge tonight, he attempts to do something that too few pro-market politicians bother to do in Europe. He makes a case that open borders are a good thing, on the basis of sound economics. But he also makes a moral case for global free trade as an unbeatable tool for fighting poverty, and creating jobs at home and abroad.

The speech is long, but he is onto something. Working on the continent, it is depressing how many free market liberals are so scared of being thought mean or uncaring that they retreat