Does Lord Mandelson’s creature Gordon Brown know how Mandy is already planning for life after his demise?

Although David Miliband seems to many a good Blairite, quite a few in the New Labour elite have their doubts. Peter Mandelson for one has always pondered on the ease with which Banana Man snuggled up to the Brown regime. Equally, The Lord of the Ring worries about the ruthlessness with which Tony Blair’s Wayne Rooney blagged the Foreign Office as the price of his acquiesence in a successful Brown coronation.

But throughout the talks to date with senior Mandarins on the subject of what to do if there’s a hung Parliament (and do not doubt it, they’ve been taking place) the First Among Equals Lord Mandelson has been an enthusiast for the Miliband Option. This is the scenario within which Nick Clegg refuses to do business with Gordon Brown, and New Labour dutifully knifes Macbeth in return for being allowed to send the current Foreign Secretary to Buck Palace begging for permission to form a Government as acting Prime Minister – prior to a proper Labour leadership contest.

In the confusion of such new constitutional territory, the story goes that Mandy hopes to grab the Foreign Secretaryship thus vacated by Miliband senior. And if this placing of a peer in the Foreign Office cannot be achieved, Mandy will arrange for a Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill to be passed – allowing him to grab the first available by-election seat and re-enter the Commons. (It goes without saying that in this bizarre vision of the future, Lord M would be lobbying hard to ensure that Miliband loses the ensuing Party contest).

This whole plot is the sort of bonkers idea hatched by those drunk with even the semblance of power during the last months of the Roman Empire’s disintegration. The chances of currency traders, Hedge Funds and credit rating agencies allowing the Treasury to remain unharmed while this sort of slow-motion tableau was unfolding are less than zero.

But it does go to show how, with the Russians closing in, those within and without the Fuhrerbunker are jockeying for the Crown of Thorns.