Damian mcbride

Mental illness has always taken up a lot of space in the lexicon of New Labour,  I have always thought Alistair Campbell’s own brush with the black dog had something to do with this. From Ron Davies’s “moment of madness” to Gordon Brown’s “psychological flaws”, the terror of incipient madeness has always been a New Labour nightmare. I wrote about this tendency a few years ago but recent events have brought me back the subject. It was telling that Damian McBride’s emails contained references to Frances Osborne’s state of mind – as if it would be a bad thing that she was upset by her husband’s political misfortunes. It seemed inconceivable in the

Just to clarify. I didn’t intend to suggest in my last post that Damian McBride’s smear tactics would have been excusable if they had worked. Sorry if I gave that impression. I was simply trying to explain the thinking behind the operation. The smears were unacceptable in any circumsatnces The Prime Minister’s belated apology suggests that he now knows how toxic this has become. He is right to be angry because McBride has put his government at the mercy of a maverick right-wing libertarian blogger. Quite why he and the people around him became quite so fixated on Paul Staines (aka Guido Fawkes), is completely beyond me.  But they were

The revelations over the weekend about Damian McBride’s pitiful smear campaign have probably delivered the fatal blow to Labour’s chances of winning the next election. The only possible excuse for writing such filth would be that it served the interests of the battle against the Tories. It has had the opposite effect. Most decent people would think twice about voting for a government that permitted such a culture to exist in Downing Street. The poison expressed in McBride’s infantile stratagem has fed back into the bloodstream of the party  he was supposed to be serving (let’s not pretend for a moment that he was acting as a civil servant in this. But the

It’s Easter Sunday and I have better things to do than think about sleazy emails. I’m unlikely to be able to post again about this again today, but I have much to say on the subject and Iain Dale in the Mail on Sunday has already quoted my previous comments about the thuggish company the Prime Minister sometimes chooses to keep. This is very serious for the Prime Minister, especially now Charlie Whelan’s name has been associated with the emails. The Tories have asked Gordon Brown to apologise and he probably should. I have always marvelled at the latitude Brown gave to his lieutenants. This has allowed him to distance himself, if

The tawdry tale of Damian McBride’s “juvenile and inappropriate” emails about Conservative politicians is pretty grim as it is. But it is just possible to imagine how the situation might be worse. What if someone even closer to McBride were on the circulation list, for example? Someone like Charlie Whelan, for example. That would be truly dreadful. And what if the emails were circulated even further, dragging in others, like Whelan, with close links  to the unions who will fund Labour’s next election campaign. Now that is so awful it is almost beyond imagination. Gordon Brown’s loyalty has always been his best and worst quality. There are many within the