“... after people. This is very different from the neoliberal state, whose job was characterised by Peter Mandelson, Bill Clinton and other Third Wayers in the 1990s as ‘steering not rowing’. The target political audience of the neoliberal politician was always the ‘hard-working family’. This imaginary unit had ‘aspiration’ and wanted to ‘get ...”

“... more than a cosmetic choice. Displaying all the insouciant condescension of a Walpolean oligarch, Peter Mandelson mused that ‘the era of pure representative democracy is coming slowly to an end.’ Each party adopted the same techniques. If they were aware that they were making the political class look alien, uncaring and fake, there was no electoral ...”

“... an old-style socialist, and Hermes – described by Harrison in an interview as ‘the Peter Mandelson of Zeus’ – engage in an agonistic conflict. From the cinema screen Hermes taunts the unregenerate ex-miner with the failure of all his hopes: History spat you out like phlegm, shop-steward of the NUM expecting, of all things, to create ...”

“... type of liberal democracy in which the oligarchs have been enjoying a free run’. When both Peter Mandelson and George Osborne find themselves compromised by their inability to avoid the company of unaccountable freebooters like Oleg Deripaska and Nat Rothschild it makes British democracy seem not so much corrupt as incompetent and weak. The ...”

“... testimony, power seldom looks alluring. The distended egos of New Labour grandees such as Peter Mandelson, and especially Prescott, float by from time to time, gas-filled blimps at risk of collision or spontaneous combustion. Mandy, prickly, imperious and unloved, falls, twice. Gordon Brown schemes to become leader, while his faction intrigues ...”

“... government’s austerity programme, has been recruited by Hunt to chair his advisory council. With Peter Mandelson, New Labour’s consigliere, said to be whispering in Keir Starmer’s ear, it’s like 2010 all over again.At a particularly stormy meeting of Tory backbenchers after Kwarteng’s tax-cutting budget, Robert Halfon accused Truss to her face ...”

“... their gratitude by electing a man in a monkey-suit as mayor, an event which may finally have sent Peter Mandelson round the bend.) But Blair has not yet been able to embrace the referendum that Goldsmith among others forced him to sign up for, the one on Britain’s entry into the euro. The reason, of course, is not the will of the people, but the will ...”

“... generations. A fifth study began in 2000 – the story is that it was set up at the behest of Peter Mandelson as a more enduring way of marking the millennium than a big wheel or a dome – and has been following around 20,000 children born between late 2000 and early 2002. A sixth study was planned for 2015. The Life Study was to be the biggest ...”

“... the finance industry, would probably demand measures purists might regard as protection: something Peter Mandelson (rather surprisingly) appears to understand. In fact, all this is largely a masquerade designed by Brown to conceal both from us and from himself the extent of his personal responsibility for what has happened. He is investing much of his ...”

“... ultimately be judged and defined by what he does.’ A journalist who may be closer to events, Peter Snowdon ends his book on a more equivocal note: ‘If the last four and a half years have been testing for Cameron’s Conservative Party,’ he writes, ‘the next few will be far harder, whether the party wins or loses.’ Not that Snowdon is in any doubt ...”

“... McCartney, Patsy Kensit, Ian Botham, Jordan, Mohammed al Fayed, Cherie Blair, Alastair Campbell, Peter Mandelson and Tony Blair. (If there are names in that list you haven’t heard of, don’t worry, none of them matters as much as they think they do.) At a Christmas lunch at the Mirabelle for his Mirror columnists, Morgan remembers ecstatically how ...”

“... a furious letter back to Blair, who was in Tuscany, and this elicited an anxious phone call from Peter Mandelson trying to smooth things out. The main plan seemed to be to stop Margaret talking to the press. The spin doctors might as well have tried to stop the earth from turning on its axis. Margaret had begun to sense her power. Robin was being ...”

“... the case of Jaballa Matar with Gaddafi (Desmond Tutu, by contrast, did his bit). Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson are fingered too, for cosying up to the Libyans, and though David Miliband was full of goodwill, a meeting at his office ended in Seif-like smarminess. Miliband placed a hand on Matar’s shoulder and asked: ‘Are you British ...”

“... was glamorous, famous and wilful. She was neon when the rest of the Firm was a fifteen-watt bulb. Peter Mandelson told Charles that he was reckoned ‘glum and dispirited’. If only the studbook had gone beyond genealogy and had recorded the malicious speculation, ruthless jockeying for favour and backstabbing that pervades the Palace.From the Firm’s ...”

“... judge by this account, that Weekend World was creating its own network of clever, ambitious men. Peter Jay, Peter Mandelson, Christopher Hitchens, Brian Walden and their slightly geeky colleagues turned out to be a more influential and politically adept group than Panorama’s fist-fighting war reporters. And none was ...”