No real political business is done during MPs holidays.
Brown is still in charge, he is not on another planet, he is in Cumbria. They have telephones there and roads, and the county is even rumoured to have a broadband connection.
Mandelson is no more in charge than he when Brown goes to sleep at night.
As for all this claptrap rubbish about dictatorship, you clearly have no idea what one is.
Lord Willie Whitelaw was Maragret Thatchers Deputy Prime Minster and covered for her as Prime Minister.
The situation of a peer being given so much power is not unprecedented. A previous incumbant at Mandelson's job, the President of the Board of Trade & Secretary of State for Trade & Industry as it was then called was the similarly unelected Baron Young of Graffham.
Was Youngs' appointment undemocratic? Did he have no mandate? Was his appointment a step towards dictatorship? The people whingeing about Mandelson are just hypocrites and guilty of double standards.
Unelected Thatcher appointees included: Lord *********, Lord Hailsham, Lord Havers, Lord Mackay, Lord Soames, Baroness Young, Lord Belstead, Lord Carrington, Earl of Gowrie.
Maybe the apathy started in 1984 when Margaret Thatcher set a precedent by bringing in Lords to bolster up her lackluster bunch of elected members.