Flashback: Draper and No10 spinners have learnt nothing in ten years.

On a hunch Tory Bear dug out his copy of Donald Macintyre's 1999 biography "Mandelson and the making of New Labour." It seems that Dolly has learnt nothing in the last ten years and there are some rather amusing similarities between

Drapergate I

and II:

As the story was beginning to break:

"By nine the following morning the potential dangers were beginning to become clear. Mandelson phoned Wegg-Prosser, asleep after returing from a party in the small hours. Why had he just seen Alan Clark on the BBC TV's Breakfast with Frost, denouncing Derek Draper as a "dodgy bloke"? Wegg-Prosser, physically trembling as he did so, begun to read out selected passages from the Observer to his boss over the phone. They agreed a "line to take" - namely this was a piece of "typical Derek Draper swaggering", that Draper risked doing himself great harm, and that he should learn some lessons from the episodes."

Remind anyone else of the "banter between blokes" line that Downing Street tried to take on Friday night/Saturday morning as the McBride/Draper smears story broke?

And where was Draper when the story broke? On holiday of course:

"Wegg-Prosser repeatedly asked Mandelson whether he should try and contact Draper, currently staying with his friend Jane Bonham-Carter at her family's villa in Campania. Eventually he did so , reaching him mid-afternoon, and breaking the news of the Observer scoop. He reported to Mandelson that Draper had seemed "taken aback but not that concerned"."

Perhaps McCavity would be a more appropriate nickname for Dolly...

One thing that Draper didn't get this time though was any defending from No10: 

"In fact it was initially Blair himself, who in the course of routine meetings at Number Ten, had taken the view that Draper, as a long-time Labour activist who had worked tirelessly for the modernisation of the party, should also be defended. It might be much too cavalier to say, as his ex-girlfriend Charlotte Raven would tell Draper later in the week, that the story really only amounted to boastful boy drinks champagne."

No such defence this time round, Brown is ruthless at cutting loose those who cause embarrassment. Perhaps most telling about Draper would be Mandelson's take on the whole situation:

"Draper, having cut his holiday short and flown into Gatwick during the afternoon from Naples, spoke to Mandelson at around 7pm. When he asked his former boss if he really believed he had said all the things quoted in the Observer, Mandelson was over-heard saying, "Unfortunately I can imaging you saying most of it all too easily"

Unfortunately Derek, everyone can imagine you plotting with the likes of Brown, McBride, Watson and Wheelan to smear the tories with RedRag lies all too easily...