Archie Bland

This is The Guardian.

You see Peter Mandelson operating at the peak of his kind of Machiavellian powers.

This has some really uncomfortable material in it.

There is no doubt that we are going to be hearing about it again and again and again.

It feels like the obituary for this government was already being written.

There are big gaps still in what we know, and I'm sure there is a lot more still to find out.

I've read quite a lot though.

I'm going to put it at 35%.

I think that's right.

That's partly because the Guardian's excellent reporting means that many of the smoking guns are already in the open.

And indeed, the morning of the publication of this tranche of documents, we reported there is no reference to the mitigations that were supposedly made on the Mandelson appointment in them.

So some of the smoking guns, as it were, are things that are not present as well as the things that are.

That's right.

And even the fact that they haven't been recorded, even if they were made, suggests perhaps a less formal than you might hope for approach to how those things are handled.

What we do get, as you said, is a really granular look at how the business of government is conducted.

We've had these kind of glances in the past with past administrations.

They're never a great look when you see how the sausage is made.

But this has some really uncomfortable material in it.

And you see Peter Mandelson operating at the peak of his kind of Machiavellian powers, manipulating just about everybody he can be in touch with and having some extremely disobliging conversations about Keir Starmer and the direction of the government with, in particular, Pat McFadden.

Yeah, people might remember that Liam Byrne had hung around his neck during the last Labour government, the note that he left saying, I'm afraid there is no money left.