What Mandy didn’t say

Lord Mandelson’s memoirs left the real questions unanswered, says Trevor Kavanagh. If even he won’t tell the truth about the Blair-Brown years, who will?

Peter Mandelson had a rich seam before him as he sat down to write The Third Man. He was present at the birth of New Labour, helped plot its path to power and then sat on the burning deck when it sank. From start to finish, Mandy was in the thick of it. Little wonder that there should be excitement about his memoirs. But anyone reading the three-part serialisation this week would be left wondering — where is the dynamite? Either the Times had missed the best bits, or Lord Mandelson has sold us all short.

This after all was the book we’d been waiting for, the greatest inside political story of the post-Thatcher years. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown may have been the stars, but it was Mystic Mandy who actually brought the Great Illusion to life. The man who rose from backroom boy to First Secretary of State and Lord President of the Council knows precisely where the bodies are buried. He dug the graves. Nobody had a closer ringside seat, a sharper eye, so many scores to settle — or a more detailed diary to rely on.

As Mandelson tells it, this is a drama bursting with jealousy, betrayal, revenge. It is the eye-witness account of two giant egos locked in a bitter political marriage, with Mandelson making it a ménage à trois. But hang on — haven’t we heard all this before?

The raging feuds and personal vendettas between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have been documented — and denied — for at least a decade. The best inside account is to be found in Andrew Rawnsley’s book, The End of the Party. It vividly charts the savage wars between Tony and Gordon — what Rawnsley calls the TeeBee-GeeBees.