By this weekend most people won’t remember the details of, and some won’t remember at all, the exchange of emails between Lord Mandelson and the former Labour blogger Derek Draper, which took place in 2008 and before Mandelson joined Gordon Brown’s Cabinet, but which was leaked to a Sunday newspaper two weeks ago. What lingers is the vague impression that Mandelson thinks Mr Brown an awkward public performer, and perhaps a conflicted private personality. These impressions will have sunk quietly into that great national collective unconscious where current opinions find their roots without our even knowing it.
One of those opinions, which that exchange was thought (and headlined) to reinforce, is that our Prime Minister may be a powerful thinker and a great policy strategist, but he’s so knotted up inside, and in public comes across so dreadfully, that these strengths are negated.
In fact that is not what Peter Mandelson was saying.
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