It’s not as if no one knew about the old differences between Mandelson and Brown

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

So, the News of the World is reporting that Peter Mandelson once criticised Gordon Brown’s leadership style, saying he didn’t have the “X-Factor” and voters perceive him as “angry”. For what it’s worth, I really don’t think that this will come as a surprise to anybody and I don’t think it’s as significant as the papers will no doubt make out tomorrow. Peter Mandelson is known to have had bitter rivalry and emnity with Brown in the past; that’s why it was a clever move to bring him back on board and into the cabinet.

More importantly, Mandelson’s role in securing so-called Blairites’ loyalty to the PM has been critical over the last few days and his attempts to unite the party behind the leadership are admirable. That is a mark of the new found respect between the two men since Peter Mandelson made a surprise return to Brown’s government last autumn.

If the old wounds were so unhealed and Mandelson still felt the same way he did when these emails were written in January 2008, it would have been very easy for him to lead a revolt against the PM on Thursday; he held all the aces on Brown’s premiership in that respect. It’s surely telling that he chose to back, rather than sack, the PM. So at the moment it’s a non-story.

That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more damaging revelations in tomorrow’s papers that have not yet been published online. Tomorrow is going to be one of the more interesting Sundays in recent British politics.

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