Mandy: Cameron is destroying Labour, and Corfugate made Osborne stronger

Lovely to get off Eurostar and find Matthew Norman’s must-read interview with the Prince of Darkness in today’s Telegraph. It’s packed full of lovely details (the great Peter Power whispering “disastrous, disastrous” every time that advert is mentioned, for example), while the idea of taking Peter Mandelson to the Gay Hussar for lunch was a masterstroke. Two highlights worth reading:

• On the Labour leadership race, he says it is “going slightly wrong” (that Mandelson knack for the understatement). David Cameron is doing to Labour what Labour did to the Tories after 1997: “We drove them further and further to the Right, and Cameron is driving us ever more to the Left. You only win general elections from the centre and we’re sleepwalking into a trap. We need to wake up. There’s still a little time for a leader to emerge from the pack.” BTW he denies he is or will be David Miliband’s Bobby.

• On George Osborne, he says they have made up and that the Chancellor is a stronger politician as a result of their run-in over that yacht business. “We both came out well from Corfugate. In politics what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”