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Never forget that new Labour was built on a psycho-drama. Peter Mandelson recently described his tormented relationship between Gordon Brown and Tony Blair thus: “I was the third person in the marriage. I was the casualty.” How very Princess Diana.

Asked by The Times why Brown wanted to lay the past to rest, Mandelson laid it on with a trowel: “There is an emotion, a sentiment which you don’t see, a gift for friendship and warmth he doesn’t always bother to put on public view. He is a private man. You know from the way he has been brought up. It is a bit like me in a way. You don’t show emotions in public. I think we may come from similar backgrounds, similar maternal influences.” That must explain why they once behaved like that other famously...