Oh Peter, how could you? You want the world to believe that you are a media victim and your epitaph to read: "Peter Mandelson. Unrecognised Genius. Hounded from office by the press. Twice."
Good try, but it just doesn't wash, I'm afraid. You have certainly suffered from some pretty beastly journalism at times. I know of several occasions when allegations in newspapers have been well wide of the mark.
When I approached you at the Guardian's last summer party, to sympathise about one obvious case, you told me that there had been so many inaccurate stories, so much spite, such persistent innuendo, you had virtually given up issuing denials. Employing that odd mixture of world-weariness and curtness that has become your trademark - the sigh, the swift turning of the back and a clipped phrase delivered over the shoulder as you aim for the door - you damned the whole lot of us.
Odd, I thought, for here you were at a newspaper party, and funnily enough, the last time I saw you was at a soiree for the In- dependent.
That's the point, though, isn't it? Almost all that we know of your talents as the Labour Party's greatest political campaign strategist, as the foremost eminence grise of modern times, have come from the media.
While spinning for Neil Kinnock and then for Tony Blair, you have never shied away from spinning for Peter Mandelson. You have made it clear to journalists that you have been the man in the know, the key player. Your currency has been inside information: the dropped word to this correspondent, the unattributable tip to that one, the nod and wink to yet another. But the coinage has long since been debased, not because what you have said has not been true, but because of its intent.
Journalists, and their editors, have long rankled at the obvious attempt at manipulation. That might have been OK, too, but once the spinner turns on the people he spins, it's no wonder that papers grew both wary and weary of your activities (and there might well be a lesson there for our old chum, Alastair Campbell, too).
In other words, you have chosen to play that most dangerous of games - poacher and gamekeeper - using the press in private while attacking it in public. That's why, during your home loan fiasco, the press attacked you so forcibly. Did you not understand? It wasn't political, it was personal.
Truly, the press was doing its proper job. Exposing your secret financial deal with another minister, and all the circumstances surrounding it, was in the public interest. But there was undoubtedly an edge to the headlines, the cartoons and the commentary. This wasn't just another minister in trouble.
It was Mandelson.
Journalists leaped at your throat with a glee I have rarely witnessed. Indeed, after researching the last 55 years of British newspapers, in which there have been all manner of political witch-hunts and smears, I am fairly sure you took the biggest and most sustained hammering any politician - aside from a prime minister or party leader - has endured. You were getting your come-uppance from the people you sought so long, but so crudely, to influence.
You said at the time of that resignation that you felt humbled and, for a while, I believed you. You seemed to have realised that you had made a terrible error and, in the unlikely event of a comeback, everything would be different.
By the way, in case this thought crosses your mind, I don't think you should attribute press hostility to homophobia. The way you were ousted on BBC TV's Newsnight was unfortunate and, after an initial, and possibly understandable, bout of hysteria from you, you did handle it well. There may be individual journalists who are anti-gay, but don't fool yourself into thinking that's why you have been getting the rough treatment all over again.
Though I was surprised at your return to the cabinet, I expected that you would be a different man. You would now be squeaky clean. You would know, after the last round, that you had few friends in the press. Indeed, implicit in what you said to me that summer evening was a recognition that newspapers were your implacable enemy. So why, Peter, why did you not stop and think before making that call on behalf of Srichand Hinduja?
I can only attribute it to your arrogance. Having returned to high office, you felt invulnerable all over again. You were entertaining Northern Ireland's finest in Hillsborough Castle at weekends. You were back inside the beltway, briefing correspondents about many more subjects than Northern Ireland's faltering peace process.
But your enemies are not confined to the press, as you also know. Some time, that call - however innocently you wish to portray it - was bound to come to light. It may well have come sooner had Mr Hinduja and his brothers made a successful bid for Express Newspapers. Journalists from competing papers would have expended hours of otherwise good drinking time trying to discover why Mr Hinduja got his British passport so soon after giving £1 million to the Millennium Dome's faith zone exhibition.
The revelation has taken longer to emerge than I expected when I first questioned the oddity of that arrangement last October. Mention of the Dome reminds me about the way in which you acted as lightning rod for the early press criticism of that project. It may have been unfair, but did it not give you pause for thought? Did it not suggest that you should step carefully in future?
Peter, you cannot really blame the press for your downfall. You brought all this on yourself. You set out to make newspapers dance to your tune, but they didn't like your music or your lyrics. Now, at the moment of your defeat, the papers are on song again.
Roy Greenslade is a media commentator