When I first heard Gordon Brown trotting out his new slogan about helping the many, not the few, I naturally dismissed it as meaningless tribal rhetoric.  Then, over the weekend, I read Charles Moore’s thoughtful piece in The Spectator on the same subject.

Moore rightly points out that virtually all progress has come from those people who have dared to challenge the consensus of the majority.  Whether it is in science (think Galileo), economics (Milton Friedman), politics (Winston Churchill), warfare (David Stirling) or virtually any area of life, we owe a huge debt to those few individuals who had the courage to be the odd ones out.

As someone who is instinctively iconoclastic, I am naturally suspicious of most so-called orthodoxy and, while I usually lack the originality of thought that might enable me to develop an alternative hypothesis, I rejoice when I find someone willing to do just that.

So let’s celebrate the few and be wary of cheap political slogans.

There is no pleasure quite so satisfying as seeing one of your arch-opponents admitting you were right all along.  In this case, it is Peter Mandelson who is the unlikely achiever of the spectacular volte-face.

Most people will remember Lord Mandelson as the cheerleader-in-chief of New Labour’s campaign to take Britain into the Eurozone.  At the time, I was closely involved in the “No” campaign to keep us out.  One of our key arguments was that Britain needed to keep control of its own economy, by retaining the power to adjust fiscal and monetary policy.  We pointed out that our economic cycle – and indeed our trading relationships - was totally different to that of Germany, France and Italy, the three largest Eurozone economies. 

This was demonstrably true at the time and has been proved to be so ever since.  Yesterday, in the Sunday Telegraph, Lord Mandelson admitted it.  He said that, if Britain had been in the Eurozone, we would not have been able to devalue sterling against the euro – which has given our exporters a significant competitive advantage and we not have been able to introduce quantitive easing either.  While the jury is still out on the results of QE, the fact remains that we still have the right to undertake whatever measures that the Government deems necessary to control our economy.

Thank you Mandy for seeing the light at last.