Profile: Peter Mandelson

Peter Mandelson's expected return to is his third remarkable political comeback.

The European trade commissioner, who twice resigned from Tony Blair's cabinets in controversial circumstances, has been appointed to a senior economic role by Gordon Brown, once an arch political enemy.

However Mandelson is thought to have patched up his differences with the prime minister, who has been consulting Mandelson on economic and strategic matters in recent months and is now looking to strengthen the government's response to the credit crunch.

The appointment will also be seen as a political rapprochement between Brown and the Blairite wing of the Labour Party, who have been threatening to revolt against his leadership.

Mandelson first made his name in politics as the Labour's communications director in the 1980s, helping to modernise the party's image and presentation under the leadership of Neil Kinnock and promoting young, modernising MPs such as Blair and Brown.

However he also began to make the first of his many enemies in the press and within the party, often being cited as the source of many briefings against MPs and accused of adopting bullying tactics.

In 1992, the 54-year-old won election to Parliament as MP for Hartlepool, but was largely sidelined by then Labour leader John Smith.

But following Smith's sudden death in 1994, he moved back to centre stage. Mandelson fell out with Brown and began their long-running feud by switching his support from the then shadow chancellor as the next leader to Blair, who, as shadow home secretary, he felt had greater "southern appeal".

Although not in the shadow cabinet, Mandelson was one of Blair's closest advisers and supporters as he created the 'New Labour' brand and transformed the party's policies and poll standing, although he remained widely mistrusted by many for his informal role in briefing the media.

After Labour's election to government in 1997 Mandelson was made minister without portfolio with a brief to co-ordinate government policy and communication, again outside cabinet rank but remaining one of the prime minister's most important allies.

He also took on responsibility for the controversial Millennium Dome project, pushing support for it through government with Blair's backing but against the wishes of many cabinet ministers.

In Blair's first reshuffle in 1998 Mandelson was promoted to the cabinet as trade and industry secretary, finally taking on a frontline role, which he relished.

But his success was short-lived as he was soon forced out of office after it emerged that he had accepted a £373,000 loan from then Treasury minister Geoffrey Robinson. Speculation suggested that the revelation had been leaked by supporters of Brown, whose press secretary Charlie Whelan was also forced to resign.

In 1999 he made his first major comeback as Northern Ireland secretary, another job in which he was judged to have performed well at a difficult time in the peace process, although republicans suspected him of favouring Ulster unionists.

Yet in early 2001, controversy again cost him his job in a scandal over whether he had lobbied for a UK passport for Indian businessman Srichand Hinduja.

Despite protesting his innocence, he resigned amid the media storm, a decision he later regretted and one a subsequent inquiry suggested he need not have made.

Although many expected him to then leave frontline politics, Mandelson stood again in Hartlepool in the general election of that year, defeating one of his old enemies from the 1980s, former miners' leader Arthur Scargill, and insisting he was a "fighter and not a quitter".

He remained close to Blair but he had to wait until 2004 for another executive position, when the then prime minister chose to make him an EU commissioner, rather than risk a third cabinet post, a risk Brown now appears prepared to take.

Mandelson was given the important trade portfolio in Brussels, negotiating, fruitlessly in the end, on behalf of the whole of the EU in world trade talks.

However he continued to make enemies, notably French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who accused him of losing the Irish referendum on the EU reform treaty with his support for free trade.