LONDON, JAN 2: Ex-British minister Peter Mandelson, a close associate of Prime Minister Tony Blair, himself leaked details of the loan scandal which forced his resignation, a biographer of the politician said on Saturday.Journalist Paul Routledge claimed in the Mirror tabloid that the loan story emerged after page proofs of his planned book on Mandelson were seen by someone else. Mandelson was then alerted to the story and leaked it himself in an attempt to limit the damage, Routledge claims. ``Mandelson decided to launch a pre-emptive strike against the revelation to `spin' himself out of trouble. His act of political suicide was completely pointless,'' the Mirror's political editor said.But the editor of The Guardian broadsheet, whose front-page expose of the scandal cost Mandelson his job on December 23, denied that Mandelson was the source of the story.``The Guardian was working on this story quite independently for several weeks before we published it.``Mr Mandelson confirmed it when weapproached him shortly before publication, but he was not our source,'' said Alan Rusbridger.Mandelson, the architect of Blair's revitalised `New Labour' party, quit as trade and industry minister in December after admitting he had secretly taken a large loan from a junior minister whose business affairs were being investigated by Mandelson's ministry.Mandelson was also the party's chief `spin doctor', concerned with putting the best face on Labour's policies, as well as its difficulties.The Mirror journalist insisted that Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown's spin doctor, Charlie Whelan - said to be suspected by Downing Street as the source of the leak - was not the informant who tipped him off about the deal.And the journalist said he had already told his publishers to remove the loan story from his book when details of it were leaked from a draft copy.
