Peter Mandelson on top form

The Prince of Darkness tries to beat his own record for 'most factual and logical inaccuracies in one article' in today's FT:

Strike One: We [the EU] are attempting to reconfigure the largest economic space in the world since the United States of America was created.

When the first former colonies declared themselves independent and began coalescing into a new country, they accounted for a tiny fraction of the global economy. Even by today's standards, the size of the economies of all the EU member states is larger than that of the USA (I think - it's certainly one and a half times as many people).

Strike Two: But the fact that is rarely mentioned in this debate is that it is a choice between bailing out these states, or bailing out the German, as well as other, banks that are their creditors.

Nope. The choice is between extending further loans to Greece or just allowing it to cancel some of its debts (with infinite shades of grey in between). Funnily enough, the Statists (nominally left wing) prefer the former and free-market types (nominally right wing) prefer the latter. And by bailing out Greece we automatically bail out the banks - that is the same thing.

Strike Three: ... the “lifting” of the economies of Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland over the past decade was driven by what was demonstrably an unsustainable credit-driven boom. A boom that lessened the pressure on these economies to address underlying structural issues, while lack of adequate financial regulation facilitated the recycling of financial surpluses in the form of imprudent lending in Ireland and the southern member states.

I'm sure there's a country to which exactly the same applies which he's deliberately missed off the list - possibly because he and his mates ran it for thirteen years?

Strike Four: The writer is a former UK business secretary and EU trade commissioner.

That's NewSpeak for "The writer currently receives various annual payments from the EU, and will receive an annual index-linked pension of £31,000 at age 65, provided he continues to promote the cause of the EU"