Mand of the Hour

Even those who viewed with scepticism Sordel's previous adulation of the Formerly Red Baron cannot deny that Peter Mandleson has had a good couple of days.

Sunday was, of course, the day when he put in his application to work for the forthcoming Conservative government, by announcing during the course of a Sunday Times interview that he would certainly be willing to serve his country during a future Cameron administration. This is entirely consistent of Baron M., since if the thought of working for people who loathed him was uncomfortable to the Great Man, he certainly wouldn't be toiling for Gordon Brown. Indeed, the faces of his colleagues could scarcely be less friendly if they belonged to die-hard Tories.

Monday then saw Baron M.'s speech to conference.

Unlike another prominent Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Peter Mandleson is not a well-known conference darling. Michael Heseltine - in many ways his closest antecedent as a maverick, egotistical power-broker - returned to the conference podium like a rock star coming to the stage in his home town. Mandleson, however, has merely been tolerated ... like a blob of toothpaste on an adolescent pustule.

The sound-bite that the news went with was "If I can come back, we can come back": a line delivered with a coprophagous grin and the air of one delivering a very simple joke to a very young nephew. He gave a sort of stage chuckle half way through, simulating good spirits in much the way that someone might simulate appetite by licking their lips and rubbing their stomach in a great big clumsy circle.

The line - however well-received in the hall - makes very little sense, though. It's like saying "if herpes can come back, swine flu can come back." The entire point about herpes is that it comes back: a guarantee that does not extend to the Labour Party.

In any case, Mandleson's best line was less widely reported. "I know that Tony said our project would only be complete when The Labour Party learned to love Peter Mandleson ... I think perhaps he set the bar too high." Here we see the essence of the splendid Baron: a man who at the summit of his power can still reproach those who declined to sign their name in blood on the dotted line.

It takes a particularly gloating form of villainy (one not seen since Cary Grant hung from Mount Rushmore providing Eva Marie Saint with a lifeline) to step on someone's knuckles when they are clinging on for dear life. Peter, Übermensch that he is, could do it with a smile.

Not, perhaps, a warm one.

It has widely been reported that the Baron has secured the prime minister's future and won over the hearts and minds of the Labour delegates with his performance.

Sordel suspects that in this case the media and the party faithful have both been misled. To misquote Richard Thompson: they thought he was saying good luck when he was saying goodbye.