Leadership Quote by Peter Mandelson

Mandelson’s line is a masterclass in political reassurance that also quietly disciplines dissent. “Going in the right direction” is the kind of phrase that sounds like conviction while refusing to specify the destination. It flatters the listener’s desire for momentum - history as a one-way escalator - without naming the policies, trade-offs, or winners and losers that “Europe” inevitably contains. The effect is deliberate vagueness: it invites agreement from anyone who wants to be on the side of progress, while leaving room to redefine “right” later.

The second clause does the sharper work. “We shouldn’t be set back” turns political disagreement into a temporal threat. Opponents aren’t merely wrong; they’re dragging the future into reverse. The passive construction (“be set back”) is also a neat evasion: set back by whom? Voters, national governments, global shocks, Eurosceptic parties, bureaucratic inertia? By not naming an agent, Mandelson broadens the circle of blame and narrows the space for legitimate critique.

Context matters because Mandelson is a quintessential New Labour-European operator: a politician fluent in the language of inevitability, modernization, and managed integration. Read in that register, the quote signals a pro-EU stance without picking a fight on specifics - enlargement, deeper union, economic reform, regulatory harmonization. It’s less an argument than a positioning device: Europe as an ongoing project that must be protected from interruptions, and the speaker as the adult in the room guarding continuity.