The Master of the Dark Arts
The Labour hierarchy is trying to dismiss ‘Smeargate’ as the actions of a rogue operator. But Damian McBride was part of a wider dirty tricks team at the heart of Downing Street
Damian McBride, the No 10 spin doctor at the heart of the “Smeargate” e-mails scandal, spent his first week of unemployment doing what he does most weeks: sending colourful text messages, drinking lager in north London pubs and supporting his beloved Arsenal football club.
“The game is the game,” he said in a text to one friend who inquired how he felt after Gordon Brown had sacked him with no payoff. McBride was quoting a line from The Wire, the cult American television series in which the police are as morally bankrupt as the criminals they pursue and where politicians and journalists collude in covering up corruption.
On Wednesday, as the scandal continued to undermine his former boss’s leadership, the 34-year-old was able to blend in with the crowd at the Emirates stadium as he watched the Gunners beat Spain’s Villarreal 3-0.
While the prime minister’s former director of strategy and planning continued life apparently unruffled by the bomb he had detonated in Downing Street, Brown was struggling to salvage the reputation of his government and to prevent the Labour party falling into internecine strife.
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In a brief premiership that has seen many dreadful weeks, the past seven days must surely count as among the worst. It began with the publication of e-mails in The Sunday Times sent by McBride to Derek Draper, the Labour blogger, in which he suggested a series of unfounded smear stories about prominent Tories and their families. These included challenging David Cameron, the Conservative leader, to come clean about an “embarrassing illness” and “putting the fear of god” into George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, by spreading false rumours that he had taken drugs and had sex with a prostitute.
McBride, who had been Brown’s chief spin doctor for six years, resigned immediately and Labour briefers attempted to portray the e-mails as “banter between blokes”.
However, the scandal would not go away. It had resonated with ordinary voters, horrified at the lies peddled by an official whose six-figure salary was paid from their taxes, and also with Labour politicians who had previously fallen victim to the McBride smear machine.
On Thursday, in a near-unprecedented act for him, Brown finally said “sorry” for what had happened.
As he did so, his government was engulfed by another crisis with the collapse of the police leak inquiry into Damian Green, the Tory immigration spokesman. The bungled investigation had been ordered by officials working for Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, and last week she faced renewed calls for her quit.
In an attempt to manage the fallout from the McBride affair, Labour has sort to portray him and Draper as rogue elements, operating way outside the usual parameters of political spin. But investigations by The Sunday Times have established that McBride was part of a wider “shadow operation” within Downing Street that had been given the job of destroying opponents both inside and outside the Labour party.
While the rest of the country struggles with the effects of the economic downturn, many of the prime minister’s acolytes seem just as concerned with furthering their own careers and wrecking those of their rivals.
IT IS known as the Strategy Committee but, like the Future Planning Committee in the film In the Loop, its real purpose is more sinister than the anodyne name suggests. While the Future Planning Committee of Armando Iannucci’s new political comedy is in reality a war cabinet, the Strategy Committee is engaged in a different type of warfare, where the enemy is not only the Tories but anybody who stands in the way of those who attend.
Round the table when it convenes on Wednesday afternoons in Downing Street sit Ed Balls, the children’s secretary; Tom Watson, the junior cabinet minister; Charlie Whelan, political director of Unite, the UK’s biggest trade union; and, until last week, McBride. Other ministers and Labour MPs drop in — Liam Byrne, the cabinet minister, often plays a prominent role – but these four are the main cast.
According to Downing Street insiders, the committee had been set up last autumn, following Lord Mandelson’s return to the government, as a “sop” to the ambitious Balls who was unhappy about Mandelson’s new role.
Officially the committee meets to discuss how to secure Labour a fourth term in government. Unofficially, insiders claim that it has become a platform for Balls to pursue his personal ambitions: to become chancellor at the next reshuffle and then leader of the opposition at the next election, if the government falls.
According to Labour figures, who are increasingly worried about what they see, this committee is a symbol of a highly damaging cabal that has sprung up inside Downing Street. Insiders say the objectives of the key players are less about saving the nation from economic disaster and more about positioning themselves for life after a Labour defeat. “There is now an operation within an operation at No 10,” according to a well placed source. “It is a leadership campaign in all but name. Everyone can see it’s not in Gordon’s interests except Gordon himself, who just doesn’t seem to realise what’s going on.”
According to a senior Downing Street adviser who has never spoken out before, McBride played a central role in this operation – doing dirty work not for Brown, but for Balls.
The whistleblower claims that Balls has been acting as McBride’s puppet master, using the spin doctor to shore up his own power base.
“Everyone has always assumed that Damian worked to Gordon, but it’s actually Ed who pulls his strings,” said the insider. “If you look over Damian’s shoulder when he’s at his desk, you’ll see about 20 e-mails a day in his inbox from Ed.”
The whistleblower, who has had a ringside seat watching the bitter rivalries and power struggles inside No 10, was prompted to speak out after Balls gave an interview last week in which he distanced himself from the disgraced spin doctor, referring to him formally as “Mr McBride” as if he were some renegade official he barely knew. “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” said the whistleblower. “It was an incredibly dishonest interview. For Ed to suggest he barely knows Damian is an absolute joke.”
Indeed, Balls championed McBride while both men were working at the Treasury under Brown and pushed for him to be taken to No 10 when Tony Blair stood down in the summer of 2007, despite the opposition of many ministers and civil servants.
The long-running operation allegedly involved deliberately undermining cabinet colleagues who were seen as a potential threat.
“This is how it works,” said the whistleblower. “Ed identifies someone as a potential rival and gets Damian to brief against that person to the media. Gordon, who’s an avid reader of the papers, then reads that so-and-so is being disloyal to him. Gordon then freezes that person out. Thus that person is weakened and Ed’s objective is achieved.”
Smith was allegedly among the first to fall victim to these tactics. “Ed was furious when an early poll showed Jacqui was the second most popular cabinet minister,” said the source. “He was in a total panic that she might emerge as a potential rival. So he dripped poison in Gordon’s ear about her being disloyal and a threat. Gordon, who is paranoid by nature, got worried and basically cut her off at the knees. He started refusing to meet her, always finding excuses whenever she wanted a word.”
Another alleged victim was David Miliband, the foreign secretary, whose brief flirtation with a leadership challenge last summer ended in embarrassment. According to the whistleblower, when Miliband wrote a provocative newspaper article, during fevered speculation about a possible leadership coup, Brown “urged caution”, advising his loyalists not to overreact. But Balls is said to have ordered McBride to ensure that Miliband’s nascent campaign was killed at birth.
The whistleblower even accuses Balls of trying to undermine Alistair Darling in pursuit of his goal to succeed the chancellor at the Treasury – a claim that will be furiously denied by Balls’s supporters. “There is huge frustration in Downing Street at the failure to create a better economic narrative. People want a much stronger message to go out about what we are doing, but Ed is thwarting it. He doesn’t want Alistair to look too good.”
According to the whistleblower – whose account was confirmed by a minister who described Balls’s activities as “unforgiveable” – Mandelson is particularly frustrated by the “shadow operation” and is desperate for “someone to bring order” to the mess inside No 10. His preferred candidate is Alastair Campbell, Blair’s former spin doctor.
It is understood that Brown has made it clear to Campbell that he can have “whatever he wants” in exchange for returning to a full-time role at No 10, including a peerage. Campbell is said to have “flatly refused” as long as Balls has such a strong power base, fearing he will be undermined by briefings against him.
Last night a spokesman for Balls said: “These allegations are completely fabricated and malevolent nonsense without any foundation in fact. The only fact is that Ed Balls and Liam Byrne have jointly chaired a meeting on Wednesday afternoons at the express request of the prime minister.”
The nature of McBride’s briefings and his modus oper-andi cannot have been a surprise to Brown even if, as he insists, he had no knowledge of the plans to smear the Tories. The Sunday Times has learnt that the prime minister was repeatedly warned about the corrosive nature of the activities of “McPoison”, as McBride was known.
Almost as soon as McBride was put in charge of the Treasury press office in 2003, cabinet ministers began beating a path to Brown’s door complaining about his methods. Alan Milburn, then health secretary, believed that he had been a victim of briefing against his foundation hospitals scheme. He also believes false rumours about his personal life were spread by Treasury sources.
Tessa Jowell was another early victim. Her aides believe the Treasury placed a series of negative stories about officials in her culture department designed to scare her away from plans to introduce American-style super-casinos.
Another warning came in autumn 2007 following the debacle of the “election that never was”. Douglas Alexander, the international development secretary and election campaign co-ordinator, fell victim to a series of briefings claiming that a snap election had been mainly his idea. Alexander blamed McBride and complained. But Brown, egged on by Balls once again, kept his spin doctor in situ.
The appointment of Stephen Carter as Brown’s principal adviser in January last year sparked a turf war between the new arrivals and the so-called “long marchers” who had been with Brown since the Treasury.
The Sunday Times has learnt that Carter, David Muir, director of political strategy, and Nick Stace, the strategic communications adviser, all made formal complaints to Brown about McBride's activities. Again, they all blamed McBride for briefing against them to the media. Stace, for example, was accused of leaking sensitive information about No 10’s internal workings to PRWeek, a magazine for the public relations industry. He strongly denied the claims.
Last September Brown was finally forced to act. As rumours of a reshuffle swept the Labour party conference in Manchester, McBride called an impromptu 3am press conference in the bar of the Midland hotel to announce that Ruth Kelly, the transport secretary, was quitting the government.
Cabinet ministers, already frustrated at the growing anarchy inside No 10, called for McBride’s scalp, blaming him for “knifing” Kelly. He was forced to take a new role in which he would no longer be allowed to brief the media.
The spin doctor slipped further into the shadows and, according to the Downing Street whistleblower, became more dangerous than ever. IF Brown was aware of the tenor of McBride’s activities, so was the Labour party hierarchy of the internet-related plans of Draper, which ultimately produced the infamous e-mails between him and McBride.
The events that led to the creation of Red Rag, the blog site that was planned as the platform for the McBride smears, can be traced back to last summer and into the headquarters of the party. Preparing his campaign team for an approaching general election, Ray Collins, Labour general secretary, turned to Draper for help.
In an e-mail to staff, Collins promised that Draper would “ensure our campaigning in the next few years matches our past best”. Others were more wary. One left-wing blogger said the upbeat announcement went down with many Labourites like a “cup of cold sick”.
Draper, who had risen to prominence as Mandelson’s aide and subsequently became a lobbyist, was exiled in disgrace in 2001 after boasting to an undercover reporter that “there are 17 people who count. And to say I am intimate with every one of them is the understatement of the century”.
Although he had deftly rehabilitated himself – training as a psychotherapist and marrying Kate Garraway, the television presenter – many were fearful that the “new” humble Draper might still have the reckless, feckless model lurking underneath.
In a presentation at Labour party headquarters on November 4 that was attended by Alexander, party supporters and left-wing bloggers, Draper proposed a number of websites. One was a platform and discussion forum for the left. He also wanted to see a lively, more scurrilous website that could target the Tories and counter right-wing blogs such as Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale.
“Derek called us all there and told us what he was going to do,” said one of the Labour supporters who attended the meeting. “He pitched himself as personally wanting to be Labour’s Iain Dale . . . he would have his own sort of gossipy website that he would do.
“He didn’t say, I’ve got this thing called Red Rag and I’m going to smear people. He just said he wanted a left-wing gossip site.”
A Labour party spokesman said last week that Alexander had arrived at the meeting after Draper’s presentation. Others who were present had counselled against Draper operating a gossip website and said he should concentrate on the more mainstream Labour forum.
However, on the same day that Draper had made his presentation at Labour headquarters, Red Rag was officially registered as a website. The name of the operator was given as “Ollie Cromwell”.
Whether or not Alexander saw the presentation, Draper’s ambitious and potentially explosive proposals were in general circulation in Labour headquarters and were already off the starting blocks. Labour officials insist Draper was told that he would have to operate any website separately from the party and they were not aware that he had any specific plans for a site called Red Rag.
Alex Hilton, editor of the Recess Monkey blog and prospective parliamentary Labour candidate for the new west London constituency of Chelsea and Fulham at the next election, said Draper clearly had the potential to self-destruct – and, if nothing worse, Labour officials had made a disastrous error by allowing him to work for the party again without proper supervision.
“The Labour party has been damaged by idiocy at the top. If you use Derek Draper, you can’t give him a facade of independence because you can’t manage him,” he said.
“A lot of people knew Draper had these plans and he should have been handled with asbestos gloves. He had been talking about this for a long time because he wanted to get the credit for it and Red Rag was registered two months before he got the e-mail from McBride. The entire Labour movement has been tarnished by his smuttiness.”
In January, McBride sent the e-mails that smeared senior Tory party figures and were intended for the Red Rag site. Draper was delighted, e-mailing back: “these are absolutely totally brilliant Damian”.
The next month Draper’s more mainstream offering, LabourList, was launched at the party’s headquarters. Alexander, Mandelson and Watson sat on the panel at the breakfast event, which was chaired by Draper.
Draper’s new online presence helped to raise his profile in the Labour movement, but he found himself swept up in the sometimes bitter and petty rivalries of the blogosphere. Viewing the Guido Fawkes blog as a rival, he launched a campaign against the site over apparently racist comments submitted by contributors for a caption competition.
Paul Staines, who writes the Guido Fawkes blog, was furious, feeling he had been unfairly targeted by Draper. He started investigating Draper’s activities. Red Rag at this time appears to have been quietly parked, partly because Draper was struggling to find someone to run it. But then Guido Fawkes discovered the devastating McBride e-mails.
Brown, trying to enjoy a family Easter break in Scotland last weekend, was hoping that McBride’s dismissal would draw a line under the affair. But he totally misjudged the fury that the e-mails had produced. In the tough world of Westminster politics, personal attacks are part of everyday life. However, smearing MPs’ families or outing gay MPs – the intention of the McBride e-mails – is seen as deeply transgressive.
Hand-written letters were sent to the offended Tories that merely expressed “regret” – a weak form of apology in political terms. These were dismissed as inadequate both by the Conservatives who had been smeared and by many Labour victims of the Brown “black ops”.
Stephen Byers, the former transport secretary, said: “To dismiss the incident as juvenile, which was the first reaction of Downing Street, totally missed the point and failed to recognise the extent of the hurt and offence caused.”
By midweek the story was spinning out of control. Rumours abounded that cabinet ministers were planning to use a Glasgow away-day on Thursday to call on Brown to carry out a purge of Downing Street. One former cabinet minister was preparing to call publicly for the sacking of both Balls and Watson.
Mandelson, his political antennae positively twitching, told Brown he had to “use the ‘s’ word”. During a visit to Govan shipyard, Brown paused for the pursuing television cameras and said he was “sorry about what happened”.
He added, with peculiar phrasing: “I take full responsibility for what happened. That’s why the person responsible went immediately.”
It was just enough. The cabinet unrest melted away. Brown’s critics outside government have withdrawn to fight another day. The scandal about the arrest of Green took over the front pages on Friday and yesterday and “Smeargate” retreated from view.
However, the issue has caused serious, probably permanent, damage to Brown’s leadership. For all his faults Brown, until last week, was still able to maintain the claim that he was driven less by spin and manipulation than his predecessor. That illusion has been shattered. Much unfinished business remains.
Watson, who called in Carter Ruck, the libel lawyers, to deny claims that he knew about the McBride e-mails, remains in his ministerial job and retains his office in Downing Street. Whelan still has access to No 10. Last week he defended his friend McBride and accused the Tories, whose chief spin doctor Andy Coulson is a former editor of the News of the World, of “hypocrisy”.
Draper has been ostracised by the Labour establishment but clings on to his role as editor of the LabourList website.
Guido Fawkes is believed to possess further e-mails sent and received by Draper which he is threatening to drip slowly into the public domain. Ministers remain ready to strike if further allegations are made about No 10 “black ops”.
A government reshuffle has been pencilled in for the summer. Will Brown close down the shadow operation? “The thing you need to know about Gordon,” said an insider, “is his almost naive loyalty to the people who serve him.”
In other words, Brown will not dismiss anyone – unless his hand is forced.
Sunday, 19 April 2009
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April 19, 2009
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