Just picture the scene at 10 Downing Street this morning. Rivulets of proud tears dripping off the breakfast table; Sam Cam giving Dave a great big congratulatory hug and “You’ve DONE it, honeybun. You’ve finally done it!”; calls flooding in from Ken Clarke and Steve Hilton and Nick Boles…

And all because of a couple of paragraphs buried in today’s brilliant Telegraph interview with Lord Mandelson by Matthew Norman.

He palpably admires David Cameron more than his atavistic Labour bonds let him admit, and small wonder. Mr Cameron is doing exactly what you wanted to do, isn’t he, in bear-hugging the Liberal Democrats to death with his love?

“He’s doing to us what we did to the Tories after 1997,” Mandelson says. “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.”