Farmer glee at hasty exit

IRELAND’S farming community wrung their hands in glee with the news that EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson is to leave Brussels.

He was never anything other than the “prince of darkness” to those involved in agriculture who saw him as selling them out in the now parked WTO trade talks.

The man who twice was forced to leave British cabinet positions gave no inkling of the plan to rejoin his old adversary Prime Minister Gordon Brown over the past few days.