But lest anyone think I am ducking, for speed and interest I am posting two articles from the brilliant Guardian newspaper. Rash statement, but quite possibly the best newspaper in the Western world.
The first is by the left leaning Seumas Milne.
Happy holiday!
Chris Burford
London
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Thursday December 24, 1998
Undone by a story that could not be spun
By Seumas Milne
Peter Mandelson's resignation yesterday - and the Guardian scoop barely 24 hours earlier that triggered it - brought to an end a week of frenetic behind-the-scenes manoeuvring over the impending £373,000 loan revelation, which has again thrown the schisms in the Government into the sharpest relief.
The crucial tip-off to the doomed Trade and Industry Secretary came a week earlier, on Tuesday, December 15. The Guardian had been independently investigating Mr Mandelson's finances for several weeks.
But it was the imminent publication of a biography by the Mirror journalist Paul Routledge that was the focus of the greatest anxiety in Mr Mandelson's inner sanctum on the eighth floor of DTI headquarters in Victoria Street, Westminster.
Rumours were circulating that the book - by a man who this year published a semi-authorised biography of Gordon Brown - would concentrate on sex and money. Security around the biography was extremely tight, following a Guardian leak of the earlier book by Mr Routledge, and with serialisation rights already sold for a large sum to the Sunday Times.
But on Tuesday last week, Ben Wegg-Prosser, Mr Mandelson's 24-year-old political adviser, took an urgent call from a media friend of the Trade Secretary who had managed to look through Mr Routledge's book proofs for 20 minutes. The Geoffrey Robinson loan was in chapter one - and the fuse was lit for the events that culminated in yesterday's political conflagration.
The warning set in train a frenzy of Whitehall activity. Mr Mandelson knew that public exposure of the loan was now at most only a month away, since the Sunday Times had scheduled serialisation of the biography for the second half of January.
Tony Blair and Michael Scholar, permanent secretary at the Department of Trade and Industry, were formally told last Thursday. The Mandelson camp meanwhile toyed with the idea of revealing details of the 1996 loan deal themselves in an effort to spike Mr Routledge's guns.
So far as the Trade Secretary and his entourage were concerned, there was no doubt who was behind the leak. Only five people had known about the loan: Mr Mandelson, Mr Wegg-Prosser and his solicitor father, Mr Robinson and his secretary, Brenda Price.
With mutual hostility between Brownites and Blairites again in full flood - and Mr Robinson a fully paid-up member of the Brownite inner circle 'hotel group' - the finger was pointed at Charlie Whelan, Brown's press secretary and Mr Routledge's closest contact in government. Mr Whelan has denied the accusation.
According to the Mandelson group's view, the leak was the Brown camp's 'Samson option'. Both Mr Robinson and Mr Whelan were on their last legs, and the Prime Minister is said to be determined that the latter should go. Their sacrifice would be worth the final destruction of the Mandelsonian temple.
By Friday, Mr Mandelson and Mr Wegg-Prosser were in regular discussions with Downing Street as to how to handle the loan story. There was still little awareness of how difficult the story would be to control. One wheeze was to give it to a rightwing Sunday newspaper in the hope that the worst of the coverage would be got over at once.
Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister's press spokesman, was not keen. The bombing of Iraq was barely over and it was, he pointed out, negative publicity for the Government. Several journalists close to Mr Mandelson now knew about the loan. Mr Wegg-Prosser argued that further delay would court the risk of being overtaken by events.
By Monday, the Guardian was ready to run its story, but even at that late stage some in Downing Street believed that the avalanche could be held off. New Labour's legendary news management skills of the Guardian putting the allegations to Mr Robinson, the Brownite Mirror had been tipped off and ran the loan story as its own exclusive.
Even after the Guardian had published its revelations, Mr Mandelson believed he could hold on, if in an enfeebled state. But by Tuesday night, after a day of gruelling media interviews, an exhausted Trade Secretary was telling friends that his enemies had achieved "the mother and father of all victories over him". Yesterday afternoon civil servants from Mr Mandelson's private office offered him a farewell glass of champagne - before he returned to his Notting Hill home, acquired at such enormous cost. "We will have our revenge," one supporter said.
© Copyright Guardian Media Group plc.1998