Matthew d’Ancona in The Daily Telegraph is impressed by Peter Mandelson’s The Third Man: Life at the Heart of New Labour (Harper, £25).

“Fluently written and substantial, this is a serious book by a serious man whose love of theatre, performance and the high life have sometimes masked his deep conviction and his implacable loyalty to the Labour Party.”

One of the strengths of the book, he writes, “is that the author does not conceal his own inadequacies and his frequent, if well-concealed sense that he was out of his depth”.

“It is fairly clear that Mandelson knew all along,” writes d’Ancona, “that the mission to Save Gordon was impossible [his popularity was however high in the immediate wake of him assuming the party leadership when he was tempted to call a snap election he would probably have won]. But a strange cocktail of loyalty, political vanity and fear that his party might implode forced his hand. Blair, for his part, disavowed the role of ‘back-seat driver’ when he left No 10 but made up for it as a full-force texter, sending endless messages to Mandelson’s phone about Brown’s shortcomings and prospects of survival.”

“What is so striking is to be reminded, in 2010, of the sheer scale of the task he faced when he joined the shattered Labour Party machine as its director of campaigns and communications in 1985. He, Philip Gould and a few others lived on their wits to steer the party back to electability – sometimes by pure sleight of hand, such as ensuring that the live television coverage of Labour events had finished by the time the delegates sang the Red Flag.”

“As much as for Brown, and far more than for Blair, the party has been and remains the spiritual centre of Mandelson’s remarkable life. Why, then, has it been such a rocky road for him? Why does he remain such a divisive figure in the tribe to which he has devoted his career? In the end, I think, they will never quite forgive him for being right.”