Ed Balls Ran Labour Dirty Tricks Unit

Ed Balls Ran Labour Dirty Tricks Unit

Iain Dale 9:25 PM

The Sunday Times is claiming that Ed Balls was the man in charge of the Downing Street dirty tricks unit. He chaired meetings which planned the wholescale 'dark arts' operation against fellow Labour politicians.

ED BALLS, the schools secretary, used Damian McBride, the disgraced spin doctor, to smear ministerial rivals and advance his own ambitions, a Downing Street whistleblower has claimed.
In an explosive new twist to the e-mail affair, a No 10 insider has revealed that Balls was the mastermind behind a “dark arts” operation by McBride to undermine colleagues. He claims the education secretary is running a destabilising “shadow operation” inside Downing Street to clear his path for the party leadership if Labour loses the next election.

The insider said: “There is now an operation within an operation at No 10 and it answers to Ed Balls.” The whistleblower, who has had a ringside seat on the power struggles inside No 10, claims that Balls:

— Engineered McBride’s move from civil servant to special adviser
— Repeatedly protected McBride when colleagues called for him to be sacked
— Was in constant contact with McBride, sending him up to 20 e-mails a day
— Instructed McBride to brief against cabinet rivals
— Exploits a weekly “strategy” meeting, which he chairs at Downing Street, to shore up his power base.

The whistleblower claims the prime minister is “strangely naive” about Balls’s activities: “He doesn’t see what’s going on. He unwittingly helps Ed by sidelining the ministers Ed sees as a threat.” All the claims are denied by Balls, who labelled them “completely fabricated and malevolent nonsense”. A spokesman for Brown also dismissed the claims.

Senior Labour figures have confirmed there is widespread anxiety about Balls’s activities. The revelations will fuel concern that the government is in terminal decline, with senior ministers more worried about positioning themselves for life after defeat than about rescuing the economy. The whistleblower, who has never spoken to the media before, was prompted to speak out through loyalty to Brown and the Labour party. He was angered by an interview given by Balls last week in which he distanced himself from McBride, who was forced to resign over plans to spread scurrilous rumours about senior Tories.

“In that interview, Ed called Damian ‘Mr McBride’ as if he barely knew him. In fact, Ed was running McBride. It was Ed who first spotted McBride’s talent, Ed who was behind his appointment as a special adviser and Ed who made sure he stayed in the job. Recently, McBride has been working almost entirely for him,” the whistleblower said. Investigations by The Sunday Times have revealed that before the e-mail scandal, at least eight senior government figures urged Brown to dismiss McBride amid concerns that he was a liability. They included Lord Mandelson, the business secretary; Harriet Harman, the deputy Labour leader; Alastair Campbell, the former spin doctor; Lord Carter, the former No 10 strategy chief; Douglas Alexander, Labour’s election supremo; and two other Downing Street officials, David Muir and Nick Stace. It is understood Gus O’Donnell, the cabinet secretary, also raised concerns.

According to the insider, on each occasion Balls protected McBride, persuading Brown he was too valuable to lose: “Even before we got to Downing Street there were discussions about whether it was wise for McBride to come too. Some thought he should stay at the Treasury. But Ed blocked it.”

Balls, who has worked alongside Brown for 15 years, has made little secret of his ambition to become chancellor, saying only a month ago in an interview that he would “love” the job. Publicly he has claimed to have no “plan” to become party leader.

The insider claims Balls used McBride to help clear his path, “instructing” the spin doctor to brief against colleagues who could be a threat. Among his alleged targets were Alexander, David Miliband, the foreign secretary, and Jacqui Smith, the home secretary. He claims Balls hopes to replace Darling at the next reshuffle.

The whistleblower went on: “Very soon after Gordon became PM, Ed was alarmed by a poll showing Jacqui was the second most popular cabinet minister. He panicked that she might emerge as a potential rival. He dripped poison in Gordon’s ear about her, and Gordon got worried and cut her off at the knees.”

The whistleblower revealed that Balls was given the chairmanship of a weekly “strategy” meeting inside No 10 as a “sop” after the return of Mandelson to government. Regular attendees include Tom Watson, the junior cabinet minister, Charlie Whelan, political director of Unite, the UK’s largest trade union, and, until his resignation last week, McBride.

Well, bugger me gently. I am beginning to think the whole house of cards could come tumbling down if Brown isn't careful. If this is even 50% true, Ed Balls has some very serious questions to answer. I have always thought the prospect of him running or the leadership was only a product of his self delusion. This story rather confirms that. At the moment, I suspect John McDonnell has more chance of winning the leadership than Ed Balls.

All we need now is for Harriett Harman to make one of her helpful interventions and the night will be complete.

UPDATE: Jonathan Oliver, Political Editor of the Sunday Times, has written a comprehensive roundup of this week's events, with some new facts HERE.

UPDATE 22.20: None of this, or the contents of the previous post have made the BBC news headlines.

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Kevin Maguire & Ray Collins Were Behind Red Rag Blog

Iain Dale 9:05 PM

The News of the World has a stonking story tomorrow which calls into question how many more lies those close to the Red Rag/McBride story have told. The Labour Party General Secretary has been forced to admit he was at the meeting which agreed to set it up. And, what's more, so was Brown lackey Kevin Maguire. And he calls himself a journalist...

THE VILE website at the centre of the vicious plot to smear top Tories was set up with the help of the boss of the Labour Party, the News of the World can sensationally reveal today. A new email shows that Labour’s General Secretary Ray Collins chaired a secret meeting to create the Red Rag website now ensnared in the Smeargate scandal.

The email’s existence links the dirty tricks site to the very TOP of the Labour Party. And it exposes the LIE, put out by Downing Street, and repeated by government ministers this week, that the smears project was just a minor aberration cooked up by a couple of renegades acting alone—and which would never have seen light of day.

The new email, written by Labour’s then internet campaign chief Derek Draper, PROVES that the meeting took place, reveals WHO was there, WHERE it was held and WHAT was on the agenda. It shows that Collins travelled across Westminster for a summit in the offices of trade union bigwig Charlie Whelan. Whelan, one of Gordon Brown’s closest friends and his former chief spin doctor, was described last night by a Labour insider as the Prime Minister’s “unofficial Mr Fix-It”.

Joining Collins and Whelan at the meeting were the two men whose leaked smear emails later brought the scandal to light: Damian McBride and Draper.

Also in the room was the man who was to be the public face of Red Rag, Unite press officer Andrew Dodgshon, as well as political journalist Kevin Maguire, who was there in a private capacity. News of the meeting, and the presence at it of the Labour Party’s General Secretary, will horrify and appal senior party workers and Labour MPs who have already been disgusted by the smear campaign.

The email reveals the meeting took place on December 1 last year at Unite’s London HQ, on King’s Street, Westminster, seven weeks before McBride sent an explosive email to Draper outlining “stories” for the site.

Last week, after the News of the World’s revelations about the shocking extent of the smears, Collins slammed McBride and Draper, while he avoided mentioning his own role in the scandal.

Collins carefully followed a line taken by Derek Draper, husband of GMTV’s Kate Garraway, and McBride that they acted alone. Draper claimed: “The idea that it was a big project orchestrated in Downing Street is ridiculous.”

However, our revelations show that Collins knew about the Red Rag site more than four months ago and did NOTHING to stop it—in fact he did the opposite. Collins also tried to distance himself from Draper last week.

“I want to reiterate that Derek Draper does not hold a position or role with the Labour Party and this will remain the case,” he said. Yet the General Secretary himself recruited Draper last year to try to set up a unit inside the Labour Party to attack the Tories using the internet.

We can reveal that despite internal opposition Collins granted Draper a pass to Labour Party HQ in Westminster, and even allowed him a Labour Party email account. Both were quietly rescinded by Collins this week after furious protests from staff following our Smeargate revelations.

The Red Rag site was borne out out of those foundations, and was set up on November 4, 2008, weeks before the secret meeting. A shocked Labour party insider told us: “It is devastating that Collins was there. It was a meeting called to set up, run and work out how to finance the Red Rag site. “It’s no coincidence either that it wasn’t held at Labour Party HQ, or that it was at Charlie Whelan’s offices in Unite. Whelan is back as Gordon Brown's unofficial Mr Fix-it, and he’s now so powerful that he’s effectively running the party. If anyone in the party was still daft enough to believe the Downing Street line about this being minor, this email finally exposes that lie." Whelan was copied in to the vile emails between McBride and Draper and his role in the meeting at the Unite HQ raises further questions about how closely the union was involved in the dirty tricks campaign.

He is political director of Unite, which has two million members. It is now one of the largest donor to the Labour Party, and it’s cash is effectively paying the near-bankrupt party’s wages as it struggles to manage debts topping £16million.

Last night Collins, himself a former assistant general secretary of Unite, admitted he attended the Red Rag website meeting but insisted he did not know about the McBride smears. He told us: “I have had no knowledge whatsoever of any smears and found the stories and reports of the last week absolutely disgusting.

“I did attend a meeting at the Unite Head Office on December 1 to discuss online digital campaigning and how we could support and encourage left of centre websites and bloggers.

“This meeting was not about scurrilous rumour, personal attacks or smears as I would have been furious that such things could be seen as legitimate tools of political debate.”

Oh dear. It's now clear why Collins went to such great lengths to diss Draper last week and to distance himself from him.

The meeting was held on December 1st, only a fortnight after Derek Draper had lunch with the Prime Minister at Chequers. Are we really supposed to believe that none of this was discussed at that lunch?

I very much look forward to Kevin Maguire's next blog or Mirror column. Presumably he will be explaining his role at this meeting and what his role in the Red Rag Website was to be. the NOTW story says he was attending the meeting "in a private capacity". Oh yeah? Perhaps that's why he now feels compromised by the whole thing and has so far failed to explain why he was copied in on the "dirty" emails.

What a Waste of BBC Money

Iain Dale 8:19 PM

A couple of weeks ago, when I was in Cardiff, I went to the cinema twice and was rather appoalled that the only adverts shown before the movies all seemed to be on behalf of the BBC. Rob Fenwick has had the same experience today. I can remember one of the ads was for Radio 1 and another one was for the iPlayer. I can't remember what the others were.

Question: How much of our money is the BBC using towaste on fund this massive advertising campaign?
Question: What is its aim?
Question: How is its success to be judged?
Question: Wouldn't this money be better spent on public service programming?

I know a lot of senior people at the BBC read this blog. I'd be delighted if they felt like answering those four questions.

New Poll Gives Tories 17 Point Lead

Iain Dale 8:10 PM

There's a new poll in the Sunday Telegraph tomorrow giving the Conservatives a whopping 17 point lead over Labour, who have dropped to 26%. The Tories are in 43% and the LibDems on 21%, up 3%. The Tories are down one.

Other interesting aspects of the poll are that 75% say dumping Brown would not affect their vote. Only 11% said it would make them more likely to vote Labour, while 13% said it would be less likely. More people think Brown is prone to spinning than Tony Blair, which is quite some achievement.

UPDATE: A second poll for the Mail on Sunday also puts Labour on 26%, but the Tories are nineteen points ahead on 45%.

Ian Hislop Lays Into Bloggers

Iain Dale 5:44 PM

I never watch Newsnight Review as its guests are usually so far up their own arses they speak a language normal mortals don't begin to understand. But so many people have emaled to ask if I saw it last night that I thought I'd take a look on iPlayer. Reviewing IN THE LOOP and STATE OF PLAY were Michael Portillo, Ian Hislop and the fragrant Clemency Burton-Hill.

I don't now what had happened in the green room, but Ian Hislop clearly took a dislike to Michael Portillo. He then launched into an attack on bloggers, and Guido Fawkes in particular demonstrating a woeful misunderstanding of what had happened in the McBride affair. It's exactly the kind of story which PRIVATE EYE specialises in, yet he seemed to think it not fit to publish either in a newspaper or on a blog! That particualr section is at about 16 minutes in.

Watch the programme HERE.