Peter Mandelson
| Constituency | Hartlepool |
| Party | Labour |
| Position | none (former Secretary of State for Trade and Industry) |
| Age | 50 |
He had engineered it perfectly. This, the man behind Labour's remarkable transformation from socialist union-backed party to the dynamic force that is New Labour, had reached the pinnacle.
Then his world crashed around him - for while his spin doctors were castigating Tory sleaze, he himself was taking dodgy loans for a house from Geoffrey Robinson, ex-Paymaster General. He was forced to go at Christmas 1998.
However, Tony Blair and he remain firm friends, and it cannot be very long before Mandelson is back spinning out the heart of British politics.