Amid all the Obamania, don’t miss Sue Cameron’s column today. She says Gordon Brown was casting around for other Blairite figures to join the cabinet before lumping with Peter Mandelson.

I am told that the newly ennobled Peter Mandelson was not Mr Brown’s first choice when he started looking for a Blairite to balance out his cabinet in last month’s reshuffle. Apparently, when Mr Brown decided to bury the hatchet with followers of Tony Blair, the former prime minister, the man he asked first was the former Blairite cabinet “enforcer” Alan Milburn. Word is that Mr Milburn turned him down, saying unkindly that the prime minister was “a disaster”. (I have deleted expletives as we do not want any BBC style “edginess”.) So was Lord Mandelson GB’s second choice? Er . . . no.

According to rumour control, after the Milburn refusal, the PM asked John Reid, the Blairite former home secretary. Apparently, he said no, too, insisting that the PM was “the cause of the trouble”. (Expletive deleted – again. Are they not horrid to each other?) So who recommended Lord Mandelson? None other than the former Blairite spin doctor Alastair Campbell, who has been advising Mr Brown – mainly by phone or text – since January. (Apparently, Mr Campbell still feels guilty about the way Lord M was forced to resign over the Hinduja affair seven years ago – “Number 10 knifes Mandelson” was the kind of press coverage he recorded in his diary at the time.) Yet another “domestic” threatened when Ed Balls, the schools secretary, started arguing strongly against Lord M coming back. Mr Balls was overruled and Lord M was duly piped aboard the yacht of state with nothing more untoward than a few cries of “Hello Sailor!” following his Corfu trip.

Amid the furore over George Osborne’s meeting with Oleg Deripaska, it is worth highlighting what the shadow chancellor thinks about people who made their money in Russia during the wild 1990s.

In a speech to Demos in late August, Mr Osborne said: “In the free-for-all of Russia in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of communism, instead of fair reward for effort we saw the unfair wholesale transfer of state resources to individuals.”

I’m not sure exactly when Mr Osborne took his holiday in Corfu, but I can’t imagine it was too long before or after making those comments.

As this blog has noted, the Tories have in the past accepted donations from two billionaire brothers who made their fortune in Russian metals and survived what was called the “Great Patriotic Aluminium War”. David and Simon Reuben, who now run a London-based property empire, have quietly donated almost £200,000 to the Tories via six companies.

Mr Deripaska was actually given his first big break by the Reuben brothers, who helped the 25-year old buy the Sayansk aluminium plant in 1994 via their company Trans-World. The brothers, Mr Deripaska and Lev Chernoi, a Tashkent-born metals trader who was striken with polio as a child, went on to build a formidable business in Russia.

As David Reuben once told the FT: “We were risk-takers. That’s why we went into Russia, and that’s why you don’t see any of the big producers, the Alcoas, the Alcans, in Russia. They are not risk-takers. It was only people like us.”

The Reuben brothers later fell out with Mr Deripaska and sold their giant aluminium holdings to Roman Abramovich and Boris Berezovsky, who reached a deal with Mr Deripaska to create Rusal.

Charles Clover, the FT bureau chief in Moscow, wrote a fascinating piece on the “Aluminium Wars” for the FT in 2000.

In 1994, the Reubens met up with another formidable Russian businessman, Oleg Deripaska, who had access to shares in the Sayansk smelter, the third largest and most profitable smelter in Russia.

At one point the three smelters gave the Reubens, along with Mr Chernoi and Mr Deripaska, control of 7 per cent of global aluminium production. The group also had a share in the Novolipetsk steel mill, and had taken control of plants in Kazakhstan which made raw material for the Russian plants.

It would surprise few who know Russia’s rough-and-tumble business world that the group has clashed with both the authorities and its competitors. Trans-World lost control of Krasnoyarsk smelter for four years after the plant’s director simply deleted its shareholding from the registry with a computer keystroke in October 1994.

The 1994-1998 period in the Krasnoyarsk region has been dubbed the “Great Patriotic Aluminium War”, in which local mafia and factory directors were sucked into a bloody battle for control of the smelter.

Dozens died in a series of murders, including local bankers, crime bosses and factory officials. The victims included both allies and competitors of Trans-World, though David angrily denies any hint that they or their partners had any role in the violence. “There is absolutely no truth to any of the allegations that Trans-World has been involved in any illegal activity in Russia,” he says.

“Let me be clear. Trans-World has one unshakeable principle - that is a commitment to follow legal principles and norms wherever we work. On more than one occasion we have been on the receiving end of actions that have lacked any legality.

“In 1994 they seized our shares in Krasnoyarsk. A vacuum was created and this attracted a lot of competitors, each one vying to gain power over the others,” he says.

In the end Trans-World regained control of the smelter, helped by the interventions of Aleksander Lebed, the former Russian army general-turned-politician. Mr Lebed was elected governor of Krasnoyarsk in 1998, assisted by campaign finance from Mr Chernoi.

There’s lots of talk in Westminster over Peter Mandelson’s meetings with Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire who owns the world’s biggest aluminium producer.

This makes Mr Deripaska the third aluminium tycoon to have played a walk-on role in British politics.

The Conservatives have accepted almost £200,000 from Simon and David Reuben, two billionaire brothers who also made their fortune in Russian aluminium during the wild years of the 1990s. They have since reinvented themselves as London-based property investors, controlling swathes of real estate around the capital.

Ben Wegg Prosser, a former aide to Lord Mandelson, has blamed the speculation over Mr Deripaska on George Osborne’s “blabbermouth”, which he “will come to regret”.

Here is an excellent piece of analysis from former FT political editor Brian Groom. He was six years early, but his prediction was still correct.  

NATIONAL NEWS - ‘Prince of Darkness’ may return once more.
 By BRIAN GROOM.
 446 words
 20 June 2002
 Financial Times

 Whisper it softly, but some at Westminster are wondering whether Peter
 Mandelson might be heading for a cabinet comeback. It could happen not
 under Tony Blair, they say, but in a future government led by the former
 Northern Ireland secretary’s arch-rival Gordon Brown.
 At first sight, the notion seems preposterous. The chancellor’s resentment
 at what he saw as Mr Mandelson’s betrayal in 1994, when he backed Mr Blair
 instead of Mr Brown for the party leadership, ran deep. Previous attempts
 at reconciliation have failed.
 Behind the thought, however, lies hard-headed realpolitik. New Labour is
 not over-endowed with creative talent at the top. Take Mr Blair out of the
 equation, and Mr Brown would find thin pickings if he came to form his own
 cabinet. Mr Mandelson, once derided as the “Prince of darkness”, is
 undoubtedly a big-league politician.
 Besides, with Mr Blair out of the way, the original source of the hurt -
 Mr Brown being prevented from becoming prime minister - would have been
 removed. Some say Mr Brown’s resentment continued not because of the 1994
 events, but because Mr Mandelson was a rival for Mr Blair’s ear.
 Mr Mandelson and Mr Brown are believed to have spoken several times in
 recent months. Mr Mandelson has been complimentary about the chancellor’s
 tax-for-health Budget, describing it recently as “a landmark for the
 government that should bolster the confidence and daring of its members”.
 Many obstacles stand in the way. Mr Blair could cling on too long for the
 chancellor; and other candidates could emerge. It would be a remarkable
 twist if it were Mr Brown who enabled Mr Mandelson to emulate his
 grandfather, Herbert Morrison, by becoming foreign secretary.
 Mr Mandelson is hedging his bets. He recently described David Blunkett,
 the chancellor’s likeliest challenger, as an example of “the ministerial
 self-confidence that the government needs”. Reviewing a book by the home
 secretary last autumn, he described Mr Blunkett as a “genuinely
 inspirational and influential figure”.
 Mr Mandelson has delivered a frank reappraisal of New Labour, mirroring
 that taking place inside the government. He acknowledges that Labour has
 relied too much on media manipulation, exaggerated some of its
 achievements, and become too close to business. He believes, on the other
 hand, that Labour has understated its achievement in tying benefits to
 work - the chancellor’s central contribution.
 Mr Mandelson remains close to Mr Blair. He was consulted last week, for
 instance, over the Black Rod crisis. But Mr Blair has shown no appetite to
 have him back a third time.
 

Alastair Campbell’s diaries have numerous references to Gordon Brown’s dislike of Peter Mandelson and vice-versa:

“TB (Tony Blair) also spoke to Peter M and said he wanted him to meet GB tonight and sort a few things out. He said if they did not work together he would have to take drastic action, because he was not prepared to let them bring the whole show down.”

“I said the real bane of TB’s life was GB and Peter’s inability to get on.”

“Once we had arrived at Bournemouth (conference) we had a session on the speech and agreed to restructure it. We had a very good laugh when we imagined what it would be like to go out and deliver a truth speech - Conference, Gordon and Peter really do hate each other.”

“TB said he reckoned that in our own very different ways, GB, Peter M and I were geniuses, the best in our fields at what we did, and the key to his strategy. But it drove him mad that we couldn’t get on…..he said when he was on the way up, the three of them could not have been closer. GB was strategy, he gave it intellectual context, PM was delivery. They were brilliant together. I said it doesn’t mean you can recapture it now.”

Separately…

Tom Bower’s biography of Gordon Brown (yes it is somewhat sensationalist) described difficult relations between the chancellor and Mr Mandelson: “Their conversations were fraught…Their conversations ranged repeatedly over the same ground: loyalty, dependability and trust. ‘I love you, but I can destroy you,’ Mandelson frequently screamed, threatening to marshal his black arts against Brown.”