Peter Mandelson may just have achieved the impossible. He has made me feel sorry for Gordon Brown. When I was a lobby correspondent in the 2000s, I spent a great deal of time covering Brown, first as chancellor, then as prime minister. I did not emerge from the experience with a particularly warm impression of the man. He was thin-skinned, prickly, self-righteous and often very, very angry. He is not, as his public image sometimes suggests, a cuddly saint. Many colleagues would take a similar view.

Brown – a sensitive man, always quick to detect a slight, real or imagined – came to believe that he had been the victim of betrayal and conspiracy

And yet, as I reflect on the revelations about the way Mandelson behaved while serving in Brown’s government – and on the way he privately wrote about Brown during that period – it is hard not to feel some sympathy for even the former prime minister.

To understand why, you have to go back to the early days of New Labour. Brown and Mandelson were once, if not close friends, then certainly close colleagues. A bond formed between them as they, alongside........

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