Perhaps without realising the implications of what he was saying Damian McBride has pinpointed the real reason behind the distrust of the Labour government’s spin machine and Gordon Brown’s failure to stamp his authority on the party. In interviews apologising for the lurid emails that led to his resignation in April, McBride insists that it was his responsibility to respond to what he considered were “vitriolic” attacks on Brown by former ministers. Instead of refusing to react to the comments of the ultra-Blairites McBride felt compelled to retaliate. Yet, by responding he was engaging in the kind of political activity which he was supposed to have renounced on becoming the Prime Minister’s political spokesman in Downing Street. As a special adviser he had the status of a temporary civil servant and should have remained above the fray. McBride did immense damage to Brown’s reputation when it emerged he had used his Downing Street email address to write fictitious stories about the Conservative Party leader and the shadow chancellor but the Smeargate scandal was part of a far deeper malaise. McBride told The Guardian and BBC Radio 5 Live (20.7.2009) that his many critics could not point to any evidence that he had actually launched smears against Brown’s rivals. But, like Alastair Campbell before him, McBride could not resist giving journalists his reaction when asked to comment on attacks on Brown. In doing so, he was fuelling the stories which have eaten away at Labour Party unity and helped to undermine the public’s faith in the government. “McPoison” was one the nick names he attracted and he said this was an inevitable consequence of working for Gordon Brown and the tension that built up between ultra-Blairites and Brownites. “When the tension did come out and expressed itself in vitriolic briefings against Gordon…then inevitably part of my job was reacting to that and responding to them. “When you get Frank Field giving quotes comparing Brown to Mr Rochester’s wife, when you get vitriolic briefings from Charles Clarke, Alan Milburn and Stephen Byers, I would not be doing my job if we didn’t respond in some kind. Mostly I was trying to respond by saying we were getting on with the job…but inevitably there were tensions there over the years”. McBride’s candour exposes the reality of the fault line which Tony Blair created by doubling and then trebling the number of politically-appointed special advisers like Campbell and McBride. They exercised their trade through off-the-record briefings and it is the increase in the number of anonymous sources on either side of the Blair-Brown divide which sparked off a briefing war which continued when Brown became Prime Minister. David Cameron and George Osborne have promised that a future Conservative government will reduce the number of special advisers. They say individual ministers will no longer have their own personal spin doctors and those advisers with the authority to brief the media will work in Downing Street and be under No.10’s control. If the Conservatives want to learn one lasting lesson from the McBride scandal it would be to understand how New Labour unleashed a torrent of briefings and counter briefings which were a boon to political journalists but which became a cancer eating away at enthusiasm and unity of the early Blair years.
20.7.2009
