Mandelson on the attack- "parish pump politicians for a global age".

Peter Mandelson has also been on the campaign trail this morning attacking David Cameron as having only "warm words and bonhomie".

Speaking to the Progress and the Foreign Press Association he told the audience that Labour was determined now, unlike the Conservatives, not to put a fragile recovery at risk.

Britain needs a government with the credentials to seize this progressive moment. I know that when David Cameron became Tory leader he tried to lay claim to these credentials. But either he was insincere or the task proved too great. Either way, Mr Cameron has not transformed his party.

He reminded the audience that the Conservatives led the deregulatory charge, starting with Big Bang in the mid-1980s and laying the blame for the financial crisis at the door of Gordon Brown was sheer folly.

Labour he says “get it” about the modern world and have a basic instinct for fairness and this is vital in difficult times.Whereas the Tories were " parish pump politicians for a global age.

He accused David Cameron and George Osbourne as having a “bargain basement” approach to competitiveness?

At their age, David Cameron and George Osborne have spent their whole adult lives in the most ideological Tory party in history. They spent the 80s saying “there is no alternative” and presumably they still believe it.