Peter Mandelson opened his address to OULC in an original manner; the threat that people would not leave without joining the Labour party was well received by the audience, although there were a few nervous laughs to be heard.

Beforehand the queue twisted around the corner of Catz’s lecture theatre, and familiar (and not so familiar) faces appeared well before the scheduled starting time. Mandelson attracted a range of Oxford students: the room was full to bursting with an eager congregation; the party faithful, the generally intrigued, and even a smattering of card-carrying Tories were all in attendance.

Of all the big names in British politics, this was one man who appealed, in one way or another, to the many, not the few. A career at once encompassing power, glamour and scandal has left behind a man carefully prepared for scrutiny, and his slick handling of the media has been both mocked and envied in equal measure. This was not your average Westminster visitor.

Lord Mandelson currently heads up the Department for Business, Skills and Innovation, a position requiring a bizarre and demanding mix of roles. His speech reflected this unusual blend, and unsurprisingly also touched on the upcoming election and the Conservatives under David Cameron.

He grudgingly conceded that Cameron has a “less disagreeable public personality than his predecessors”, but dismissed any arguments that this would be a deciding factor in next year’s election. “I don’t think that likeability and personality are the only, or even dominant, factors in what makes up people’s judgement.” He also raised the point that the public feeling for the Tories is one of acceptance, rather than passion. He argued that the wave of support on which Blair sailed into office in 1997 was absent for Cameron, because “people don’t know, or don’t believe, that the Conservative Party has really changed.”

Mandelson focused on Cameron’s conference speech, teasing out the ideological dividing line on which he believes the next election will be fought. While Cameron rejected the concept of big government, Mandelson challenged his assumptions, and emphasised his support for “a government big and strong enough to do the heavy lifting”. He added that the next general election would be a significant milestone in British politics, saying, “The next general election is going to be the biggest change general election in a decade.”

OULC’s Jamie Susskind and Ben Lyons caught up with Mandelson after the speech for a few questions. On the subject of unpaid internships, Mandelson was characteristically vague about his opinion, offering the explanation “what you can afford is going to be constrained by the number of people you want to have access to those placements.”

Following the rather odd question posed to Alastair Campbell the week before on what the two of them would get up to if stranded alone together on a desert island, Lyons asked Mandelson what he thought of the prospect. He pondered the idea, and concluded that they would probably spend their time working out how to get off it.

He added that if he was forced to take a member of the Cabinet to Lyons’s hypothetical island, it would probably be “one of the Milibands”, because “they are both friends of mine, and I enjoy their company”.

He earnestly finished by commenting, “Don’t believe the cynicism of the media, believe in yourself, and your convictions”, and on that note, ‘Things can only get better’ began to play in the background, and all were transported to a happy day twelve years past, in the time where snappy sound-bites were enough to get the nation, and their votes, on side. Or perhaps we imagined that.