Osborne made a mistake but is their something more sinister going on

Do read Melissa Kite's feature in the Spectator this week.

It gives an excellent account of the Corfugate affair and wonders why Rosthchild reacted in such a way

But the impression remains that there must be some other reason why Mr Rothschild reacted in the way he did. Personal animosity can run deep between boyhood friends. It is never easy to see an old contemporary in a position of power. Maybe Mr Rothschild contemplates his old Bullingdon chum as Chancellor of the Exchequer in a few years time and cannot quite see it. Possibly he remembers a curly-haired geek in a dodgy waistcoat cavorting around Oxford and thinks: Nah! Or perhaps Mr Rothschild, an influential figure in the banking world who sits on advisory panels, has good reason to support his contacts in the Labour party rather than stand by his Tory friends two years from an election. Rumours abound that he acted after a phone call from Tony Blair urging him to intervene on Mandelson’s behalf.

But she belives rather tellingly that the ramifications for Mandleson may be greater

On the surface are allegations surrounding Mandelson’s decision to remove a punitive 14.9 per cent import tariff on aluminium foil damaging Deripaska’s aluminium company Rusal. As EU Trade Commissioner he signed off a deal in December 2005 to remove it. When asked about his links with the Russian this week, Mandelson’s press officer in Brussels only admitted to meetings in 2006 and 2007 and said there could therefore have been no conflict of interest in the decision to drop the tariff. But it has since emerged that Mandelson had dinner with Deripaska in Moscow in January 2005, along with Rothschild.