The price of Mandelson’s support

The cover piece in the new issue of the magazine is by my former opposite number at the New Statesman, John Kampfner, and is a defining addition to our knowledge of the crucial 48 hours in which Gordon Brown’s fate was decided earlier this month. As the polls for the local and European elections closed at 10pm on Thursday June 4, James Purnell announced that he was resigning from the Cabinet. David Miliband has since revealed in a Guardian interview that he considered quitting, too, but that he had “made my decision [not to] on Thursday” – and that Peter Mandelson was critical to that decision. “I’m not going to go into [our conversation],” Miliband said, “but we didn’t sort of talk about the weather.”

In the days that followed, as Brown’s reshuffle was completed (just), it became clear that Mandelson had effectively saved Brown’s premiership: an outcome that Mandelson himself admitted