Published: 22 July 2010
by ILLTYD HARRINGTON

IT has the potential of becoming a Barnum and Bailey three-ringed circus, with Brown the snarling, unchained bear;
Blair the high-wire trapeze artist; and Peter the contortionist, illusionist and ring master. 

Some hoped it would be a public stoning. 
Instead, the Third  Man arrived, and stayed, in a non-stop media whirlwind for more than a week. The spinner has spun himself.

As the Blair-Brown days were pronounced dead on May 6, rejection and being in denial was the order of the day. Ed Miliband, the author of Labour’s manifesto, announced to an indifferent world that the Blair and Brown days were over. 

Peter gave his opinion of the Labour hustings over the phone to me last Saturday. 

I don’t repeat or record private conversations. But what of his future? 

On that long, frustrating weekend in May, when no one won the general election, some threw their hands up in despair while time-servers settled down to five years of somnolence in Parliament. 

But Peter was hyperactive and took charge of negotiations with the Liberals. He had long-cultivated personal relationships with Nick Clegg, who was dreaming the impossible dream – Power and Office. 

The price? Gordon’s head on a plate and a second-class rail ticket to Scotland.

From the internal story, and my own private sources, it seems Peter almost brought it off. His failure to do so has meant Liberals and Tories have established a mendacious but successful coalition, feeding off the maggot-ridden meat of the 1920s and even more of the 1930s. 

It is obvious even to political illiterates that David Cameron has stolen Peter Mandelson’s book of political warfare. It is a political propaganda coup worthy Dr Goebbels when the “Big Society” is sold on the same day as profound cuts in schools, hospitals and general public services – topped by an increase in a students’ fees. 

Peter looks back nostalgically on the brief days of the three musketeers – Tony, Gordon and Peter – as a Golden Period. 

In the Orson Welles film, the “Third Man” came to a sticky end. 

Peter is more the Fourth Man, if you remember Burgess, Maclean and Kim Philby. And then came Sir Antony Blunt, an elegant, delegate determined fixture,   who never broke cover over 50 years. 

And like the incorrigible Dr Pangloss, Peter has looked at the voting pattern, the development within our society, and the new demography within Britain. 

He believes coalitions are here to stay and will be an essential part of the future part of the government and this country. 

Peter will be 60 when the next election comes – Gladstone was Prime Minister at 84 in the 19th century, and that elegant, over-scented Disraeli was in his 70s. 

The Third Man has to be compulsory reading for those who wish to fight public deceits.

It is also a public face of a defiant, ambitious and ruthless political animal. This leopard is not ready for the safari park – he’s heading for a brand new political zoo.

• The Third Man: Life at the Heart of New Labour. By Peter Mandelson. HarperPress £25
• Illtyd Harrington is literary editor of the Camden New Journal and former deputy head of the GLC