Having championed the City of London's interests for a decade, he then discovered that the casino capitalism practised by it and other global financial markets could wreck his risk-based approach to financial regulation, and wound, possibly fatally, his already heavily-tarnished reputation for macroeconomic stability and fiscal prudence.

Given this experience, Brown's decision to bring Peter Mandelson back to the Cabinet is all the more surprising. Indeed, it has propelled the Prime Minister into the high roller league of political risk-takers.

For Brown's supporters, or at least those who have not spent their political careers engaged in bitter hand-to-hand fighting with Blairites, the return of Mandelson smacks of political genius.

David Blunkett, the former Home Secretary and Sheffield Brightside MP, has described it as a "masterstroke". Then again, he too might be hoping for a political comeback before the next General Election.

For Brown's many detractors, the return of Peter Mandelson, the Kevin Keegan of Labour Party politics, may smack of political desperation. For them he is less of a political Messiah, than a false prophet of the black arts of spin, sleaze and Machiavellian plotting. Whatever interpretation is placed upon the Cabinet reshuffle, Mandelson's return, along with that of Margaret Beckett, tells us some very important truths about the Brown Government at the end of the political party conference season, and less than 20 months before the next General Election must be contested.

Any pretence that Brown's appointment as Prime Minister marked a fundamental break from the policies and agenda of New Labour has been dispelled.

Derek Draper, Mandelson's former adviser, has described Mandelson as "New Labour to his fingertips". All Brown needs to do now is to bring back Alastair Campbell to the Prime Minister's Office, and the entire original New Labour "P5" inner circle will have been reunited (the fifth member is Philip Gould, Labour's pollster), with the sole exception of Tony Blair, Brown's nemesis.

As far as experience goes, both Mandelson and Beckett are political heavyweights and shrewd tacticians. If their purpose is to further
highlight the "novices" in the
Shadow Cabinet, they certainly will serve that purpose. Mandelson, in particular, will be especially adept at wrong-footing David Cameron and George Osborne.

The thesis that it was Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Party which created the broken society and laid the foundations of the credit crunch through their policies of privatisation, liberalisation and deregulation is likely to be an early theme for Mandelson. He will not
be slow to point out the extent to which Cameron's Conservatives
have been financially dependent upon donations and loans from
City traders.

However, Mandelson and Beckett's return has also emphasised the conspicuous absence of political heavyweights among the ranks
of the Cabinet itself, and the
degree to which the prospects of
a fourth consecutive General Election victory will be in the hands of
political "novices".

Mandelson's appointment to the peerage also drives a coach and horses through Brown's promise
of a "new politics". The Brown Government's Governance of
Britain White Paper and legislative programme promised the
re-invigoration of our democracy,
and the renewal of the accountability of Parliament.

By contrast, Mandelson's peerage is a prime example of Prime Ministerial patronage, which has bypassed any notions of democratic legitimacy
and accountability.

Moreover, the prospect of Beckett serving as a Cabinet "enforcer", to drive through controversial legislation like that surrounding the detention of terrorist suspects for 42 days, has simply adorned Brown's "clunking fist" with a political knuckle-duster. It has served only to reinforce Brown's reputation for top-down, centralised government.

In terms of electoral appeal, there is little to suggest that Mandelson enjoys any popular resonance whatsoever with the electorate. It is hard to understand why his return from Brussels should persuade any of the four million voters or half of the Labour Party's membership who have abandoned the party since May 1997 to return to the fold.

On the contrary, Mandelson and Beckett's return will make it easier for the Conservative Party to contest the next General Election campaign on the same political territory as Barack Obama's Democrats.

The electorate will be presented with a choice between either the experience of more of the same from a discredited incumbent party, or the prospect of change from a new and younger political leadership. For Brown and Mandelson, it could all end in tears.

In his major conference speech, David Cameron asserted that the next General Election would be about leadership, character and judgment. On the very day that the resignation of Sir Ian Blair from the Metropolitan Police should have called into question Cameron's own leadership, character and judgment in endorsing Boris Johnson as his party's candidate for London Mayor, Brown's reshuffle has thrown the political spotlight back on to his own credentials as
a statesman.

In the aftermath of successive by-election defeats, Brown promised
the electorate that he would listen and learn. To whose voice was
he listening when he brought back Mandelson?

It is hard to discern what the Prime Minister has learnt from the credit crunch that has made him forgive the man who in June 1994 deserted him for Tony Blair as his preferred choice to succeed John Smith as Labour Party leader.

It is equally difficult to imagine that Mandelson's return will persuade floating voters in the Glenrothes by-election not to cast their vote for the Scottish National Party.

Like Kevin Keegan, for his supporters, Peter Mandelson could be the Messiah whose return from the political wilderness engineers an historic fourth term for New Labour. On the other hand, as his track record of two embarrassing Cabinet resignations suggests, Mandelson may not be the Messiah, just a very naughty boy.