20th July:

Listening to Radio 4 the other morning, I caught an interview with the ex-Labour government cabinet minister Peter Mandelson mercilessly plugging his new book “The Third Man”.

Mandelson is a curious animal: a career politician who has preferred to lurk in the shadows during the key political events of the last 13 years and yet now, sensing that his political career is all but over, seems more than happy to thrust himself into the limelight and cast himself in the role of powerbroker, mediator, string-puller and lynchpin. A thoroughly modest chap, then. He is also gay, which is slightly odd because he gives all the gay men I know the complete creeps. Not even with mine, apparently. Incidentally, when I discovered that Mandy’s long-term partner is called Reinaldo and speaks Portuguese, I thought “good, you are welcome to each other”. I was actually quite disappointed to find out it wasn’t the footballer…

There is something a little distasteful about Mandelson’s attempts to illuminate (embellish?) his alleged role as “third man” in the birth of New Labour and the Blair-Brown pact. Of course, his reasons for publishing his memoirs so soon after the general election are primarily commercial, but one suspects that ego also plays a significant part. A lifelong member of the labour party he may be, but Mandy has twice had to resign from the cabinet when the press latched on to dubious deals with high-profile business figures, and he clearly moves in influential circles. Greek cruises with banking tycoons and holidays in luxurious villas at the largesse of Industry Chairmen seem to be par for the course. And yet back he has come; the kind of establishment politician figure that pie and mash socialists (and I do not use that term as a pejorative) like Dennis Skinner have always loved to hate. One suspects the feeling is mutual.

The timing of this book also suggests that Mandy is not particularly concerned about burning bridges within the Labour party. Many within the party hierarchy will be furious at the prospect of the fine minutiae of the Blair-Brown rift being held up for all to see when, to put it bluntly, the post-election Labour corpse has barely cooled.

When describing Mandelson, a colleague of mine recently used the term “sneaky”, and it’s a hard one to disagree with. He’s clearly an intelligent man, but he seems to revel in the “Prince of Darkness” monicker just a little too indulgently, and the way he jumps so seamlessly from spin to alarming candour in interviews certainly makes you feel uneasy about his motives and his agenda.

Peter Mandelson: you might play poker with him but you would certainly be checking your pockets on the way out…