The Slogger has a feeling in his water about The End of the Party.

None of us have read the Great Rawnsley Read as yet: it’s embargoed until the new-look Observer has finished wringing every last drop of shock-horror from its enormous number of pages. To my good self (an early front-runner in the Brown Unfit to Rule stampede) it should of course be manna from Heaven, grist to the mill, sauce for the goose and any other saying that means ‘more of the same’. And the more ‘more of the same’ there is, the quicker Brown will be history, right?

There’s just one problem. I’m a curate’s egg the same as everyone else – but I do think I’m honest. And there are bits of this serialisation seen so far I don’t believe.

People will say I should withhold judgement until the Big One itself is applying pressure to the shelves of Mr Waterstone. But I don’t see why I can’t at least wave a red flag at this point. And if I’m proved completely wrong, I’ll wave a white flag and buy Andrew lunch at Bank, or somewhere equally noisy and overpriced. For I freely admit I could be quite wrong.

With that caveat, here are my doubts.

First, I do know quite a bit now about Blair’s state of mind during 2003 and 2004. And the descriptions of soul-searching depression don’t match any of the first-hand accounts I’ve heard. Last Sunday, in fact, I rang a trusted source who found the serialised description of Blair’s Conscience a la Rawnsley laughable.

Blair is a consummate actor, so there’s a case for saying Rawnsley was simply duped. But over six months? Perhaps.

Second, I don’t know if you’ve spotted this, but every whinge from the Brownshirts about the more colourful incidents and quotes has been greeted with a response straight from the Stepford School of Dismissal. So imagine the creepy feeling I got when going to his publisher’s website, I discovered the very same phrases written by Tom Lacey, the author’s editor at Viking (my italics on the Stepfordian words)

‘….on matters of substance Rawnsley’s sources were impeccable. Virtually all were first hand (’24 carat’ as he calls them) from people who were in the room at the time the incident took place, and many were backed by taped conversations….’

All fine and dandy – but it gives me the same frisson I always experience after hearing four Cabinet ministers in a row all say ‘not a situation I recognise on the ground’. I’d expect Viking/Penguin to be armed and ready for the Knitting Circle of Darkness to have a go at Rawnsley; but this all felt a bit too scripted for my liking. Still, it could just be me being picky.

Third (and I’m not getting into a slanging match about specifics here) there is one ‘informant’ in the extracts seen to date whose syntax feels decidedly wrong. It feels wrong to me….and it feels wrong to another Slog source as well. (Not the person I rang at the weekend: this Mole emailed me). But we all say and do things out of character at times. Even me.

Finally – and there’s no real logic in this bit, it just adds to a gut feeling – I have to share some of the feelings expressed by others with whom (I’d be quick to accept) The Slogger has nothing politically in common at all. One such is ageing Far Leftie Dave Semple, who writes on his site:

‘Rawnsley’s last book on the subject was in 2000, when he wrote Servants of the People, dealing with similar themes. Brown took over in mid 2007…I don’t trust the word of ‘witnesses’ who have been prepared to hold their tongue until it is politically convenient to smear Brown / reveal the truth. If true, these allegations reflect just as badly on the witnesses, as they have been content to lay low while other people continued to be subject to the types of behaviour Rawnsley outlines.’

I agree 100% with both the moral and accuracy dimensions of that comment. Once my account of the Brown-on-pills allegations was smeared, and the drama reached Marr Level, you’ve never seen so many sources run for cover so quickly. Now they’re talking to everyone who’ll listen: seeing Bruce Anderson write last week ‘the Brown personality defects had been well-known in Westminster Circles for years’, I did want to smack the bloke very hard for not admitting that last October when I was under heavy fire.

Most of the anti-Rawnsley rhetoric is exactly what you’d expect: the oily mendacity of Mandelson, and the barely competent nonsense put out by the New Statesman on the 21st February. But these are people with an agenda.

I have an agenda too: I have stuck consistently to the view which resulted in slanderous drivel about me from Mandelson, Bradshaw & Balls last September. That line is ‘a man allegedly on heavy medication for a serious personality disorder – and clearly suffering from badly impaired vision – should not be running the country’.

I’m beginning to wonder now if Andrew Rawnsley also has an agenda somewhat bigger than hitting a barn door like Brown. I’m speculating quietly (and naturally, in an entirely libel-free, unpublishable manner) that this agenda might include matters of a post-election, cross-Party Constitutional nature.

But I couldn’t possibly comment. And again, I could be totally mistaken and misinformed.