Mandelson’s candid reflections on being the third person in Blair and Brown’s marriage

Robert Crampton’s interview with Peter Mandelson in The Times magazine today is compelling reading. Mandelson talks frankly about the Blair-Brown marriage and how he ‘was the third person in the marriage. I was the casualty.’ It is this that Mansdelson thinks ‘wrecked’ his political career.

Mandelson is remarkably candid about how divided things were. At one point Mandelson declares, ‘Everyone was divided, the government was divided, MPs were divided, the media was divided, into camps’. The language he uses is also strikingly emotional even apart from the marriage analogy. When talking about advising Blair from exile Mandelson says, ‘I always felt it was important for me to be there for Tony and I was, any time, any day, and he knew he could talk top me about anything, and I did. But somehow it was always as if we were having to operate behind some thin veil.’