Mandelson resignation ‘driven by media deadline’

The bitter war of words between Downing Street and Peter Mandelson over his dramatic resignation flared into new life today amid claims that he was driven from government to meet a media deadline.

Best-selling author Robert Harris, who is a close friend of the former Northern Ireland Secretary, said that Mr Mandelson was standing by his account of his role in the so-called ‘‘passport-for-favours’’ affair.

And he attacked the Prime Minister’s press secretary Alastair Campbell for briefing Sunday lobby journalists for 10 minutes last week about Mr Mandelson’s ‘‘mental stability’’.

His comments will fuel the damaging row in Whitehall as opposition MPs pressed Tony Blair to widen the official inquiry into events surrounding the application for British citizenship by the controversial Indian tycoon Srichand Hinduja.

Mr Mandelson was forced to quit the Government last Wednesday after he admitted issuing a misleading statement about his contacts with the Home Office over Mr Hinduja’s naturalisation claim.

However Mr Harris told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that Mr Mandelson had been ‘‘browbeaten’’ into resigning without the full facts having been made available.

Mr Mandelson was sticking to his original account that officials in his private office had handled the query to the Home Office as to whether a change in government policy would affect Mr Hinduja’s chances of getting a passport.

Mr Harris said that Mr Mandelson still had no recollection of making a telephone call to Home Office minister Mike O’Brien.

There was no official transcript of the ‘‘alleged’’ conversation and the Home Office note simply had the three words ‘‘Mandelson, Hinduja, naturalisation.’’

‘‘He is absolutely confident that what he originally thought and said that the contact between his office and the Home Office on this matter was handled by his private secretary,’’ Mr Harris said.

‘‘He cannot still recall this conversation that he is alleged to have had with Mike O’Brien.

‘‘He doesn’t think Mike O’Brien is a liar so obviously there could have been a conversation. He just cannot remember it.’’

Mr Harris also criticised the way that Downing Street handled the resignation and said that if Mr Mandelson had been given more time he would have been able to produce the evidence from his former officials in the Cabinet Office to support his version of events.

‘‘I think certainly it was unfortunate, to put it mildly, that the whole of this affair seems to have turned on having the news ready to give to the morning lobby meeting at 11 o’clock in Downing Street on Wednesday,’’ he said.

‘‘If that briefing had been postponed by maybe only an hour, then the information that Peter Mandelson’s private secretary handled this whole thing would have been in the Prime Minister’s hands.

‘‘To the extent that the whole thing was being driven by a media deadline - that is a very bad thing.’’

Mr Harris also criticised reported remarks by Mr Campbell to journalists that Mr Mandelson had become ‘‘slightly detached’’ - a comment that Downing Street insisted was taken out of context.

‘‘I think it is a pretty poor thing to have a civil servant ruminating for 10 minutes about the mental stability of a former Government minister. That seems strange to put it mildly.’’