hurt at the top

From a voice as far from the bottom of the heap as you can get, a close confidante of a Prime Minister in his innermost team who reworked a party and won 3 elections. No aspie, and whose ability to climb high any of us could envy. Yet so familiar.

From Peter Mandelson's memoirs The Third Man. Quoted from a note he wrote to Tony Blair in 2001:

"I am not a natural politician in certain respects. I do not always mix easily. There are reasons for this, but when you have been on the receiving end of so much personal nastiness, you develop a shell and an insularity as a means of protection."