When Peter Mandelson announced on Monday that Britain should be prepared to renegotiate the annual £3.2 billion rebate which we receive from our EU payments, he knew exactly what he was doing.

He was not floating an idea which had suddenly occurred to him. He was not dropping a thought into the river to see how large would be the ripples.

On the contrary. He was making a carefully considered statement, which he well knew would be explosive in its implications.

At the very time when Tony Blair is battling to resist pressure from the rest of the EU to scrap the rebate, Mr Mandelson decided to weigh in with his own comments – words which have undermined the Prime Minister’s already delicate task in holding off the pressure from President Chirac. On the face of it, Mr Blair must be livid at his former Cabinet colleague’s interference.

But when it comes to Mr Mandelson, one always has to preface things with ‘on the face of it’. Nothing he says or does is ever straightforward. When Peter Mandelson speaks, he not only means what he says; he implies a lot more. As Prince Metternich is said to have remarked when learning of the death of the wily French diplomat, Talleyrand: “I wonder what he meant by that”.

As his speech on Monday showed, he is clearly not content to stick to his job in Brussels. Forays into British domestic politics are, to an inveterate schemer such as he, irresistible. Indeed, far from his meddling being uninvited, there are plausible suggestions that his words on Monday were in fact spoken with the support of the Prime Minister, and were part of Mr Blair’s broader fight with Gordon Brown.

It is, after all, the Chancellor – not the Prime Minister - who has been unambiguous in his defence of the rebate. Mr Blair has been far less clear than Mr Brown that he would defend the rebate come what may. As the Prime Minister put it on Friday: “If you have a fundamental review of how Europe spends its money then of course everything then is open to debate”. It was Gordon Brown’s stubborn determination not to countenance negotiation of the rebate which was Mr Mandelson’s real target. As the tensions between the Prime Minister and Chancellor re-emerge, and with Mr Mandelson’s penchant for high level political scheming, it is likely that Mr Mandelson grabbed at the possibility of influencing domestic politics once again.

Whatever the motive underlying the European Commissioner’s remarks on the rebate, however, his speech was a classic of its kind. It dripped with Eurocrat superiority, its every sentence a lecture to the reprobates who were not fully signed up to the European project to mend their ways - or else.

As he put it: “In Brussels, Britain has sounded neo-Thatcherite, as though nothing has changed from the 1980s”. For Mr Mandelson and his fellow Eurofederalists, that is the ultimate crime – daring to stand up for the national interest; refusing to bend the knee to the dictates of the Eurofanatics.

Do these people never learn? It is precisely this Eurocrat mentality which was so angrily attacked by French and Dutch voters in their recent referendums.
Not that they care what the hoi polloi think. Mere voters are ignorant of the importance of the European project, and as such not to be taken seriously.

Indeed, set foot in Brussels for any length of time and you see why it is that the likes of Mr Mandelson behave as they do. I have spent much of my time in Brussels in the past few years. Nothing prepares you for it. The atmosphere feels as if a cult had taken over an entire city - a cult which knew that it alone held the key to the future, and that anyone who rejected it was damned for ever and morally wrong.

For those at the top of the pile, life could scarcely be more wonderful. You are surrounded by worshippers, all of whom support what you are doing, and all of whom agree that they hold the future in their hands.

For those who are already signed up to the EU credo of ‘ever closer union’ (such as Mr Mandelson, whose Eurofanatic track record is long), appointment as a commissioner is as good as it gets.

You are surrounded by fellow believers, none of whom would ever challenge your wisdom. After all, as a believer in the ‘European destiny’ (yes, they really do talk like that) your rectitude is, by definition, unquestioned.

So the fact that you live a life of luxury, followed by an exorbitant pension, is not an outrage but your right. You are shaping the future. You are entitled to it.

That is why, when they venture out of the Brussels cocoon and are forced to talk to ordinary people – people who do not accept the thoughts of Peter Mandelson as holy writ – the Eurocrats behave with such condescension to the rest of us.

Look at Mr Mandelson’s predecessors. Chris Patten, who before he was despatched to Brussels was a well liked minister with a popular touch, turned as a Commissioner into the very personification of pomposity. Neil Kinnock, who suffered two humiliating election defeats from British voters, now lectures us as if the mere fact of his having been a Eurocrat gives him the authority to instruct us on how to behave. Leon Brittan spent the years of John Major’s Premiership laying down the law on the euro.

That is what Brussels does to people. Surrounded and embraced by their fellow ‘visionaries’, they forget how to speak to the rest of us – let alone how to react when challenged. All they can do is tell us that, by daring to question the project, we reveal ourselves as unworthy of serious consideration. Appointment as a Commissioner acts like an injection of smug EU superiority into the bloodstream.

The notion that, as Commissioners, Mr Mandelson and his colleagues are technically civil servants, and have no business telling elected politicians how to behave, strikes them as laughable. Whatever the proprieties, these people believe – more than that, they (ital)know(ital) – that they have a higher calling.

As holders of the revealed truth – that Europe is the future and the nation state a dangerous past – they see it as their duty to tell us how to behave. And when mere voters dismiss their projects, they know that they must ignore their views, for the sake of Europe.

Nothing must interfere with Europe. That is what Mr Mandelson’s real message is. Whatever we, the British public, might think, it must be he, and his fellow Eurofanatics, who make the decisions.