Tobback is the mayor of Leuven, a well respected minister of state and the father of SP.A party president Bruno Tobback. His bouts of anger are legendary and even in his 70s, he finds plenty of reasons to get angry.

The latest object of his indignation is UPlace: a gigantic “shopping experience” mall that is to be built in Machelen, just off Brussels’ ring road. UPlace is planned on a brownfield, the site of a Renault assembly factory, which closed in the 1990s, leavings thousands unemployed. Lorin Parys, UPlace’s COO, predicts that UPlace will create up to 3,000 new jobs. Everyone happy, then?

Well, not really. Tobback fears that the new mall will draw away punters from the streets of Leuven and other city centres. This, he says, will result in job losses that greatly outnumber those jobs newly created. Mobility experts have also warned of even more traffic deadlock on the already-overcrowded Brussels Ring. To make matters worse, two similar projects are planned in the Brussels region, less than 20 kilometres away from UPlace.

Tobback has another reason to lash out at UPlace: Lorin Parys. The UPlace spokesperson is leader of Open VLD in Leuven and will probably be Tobback’s challenger in the local elections in 2012. Now, Tobback is the last person to take any political competition seriously – he is often called “emperor Louis” – but that is no reason to stop him from discrediting them.

So where does Kris Peeters come into this? Last week, his government granted UPlace a building permit – sending Tobback into rage. Some months ago, though, the province of Flemish Brabant refused an environmental permit, for obvious reasons. It is now up to the Flemish government to speak out on this.

Before Tobback moved in, the socialists seemed happy enough to go along with UPlace, but it is clear that father and son Tobback make for a change of direction. This is where the parallel with Oosterweel becomes jarring: in that issue, too, the socialists (as well as other parties) flipped over, almost leading to a fatal crash for the Flemish government. Something to think about for Peeters? UBet.