Britannia Radio

TELEGRAPH 20.5.09

Emails suggest attempt to smear Tory as racist

by John Bingham

Damian McBride, the former aide to Gordon Brown,  who resigned over  

the Downing Street scandal, deliberately set out to portray a  

prominent Tory as a racists, emails suggest.

Extracts of exchanges between Mr McBride and Derek Draper, the former  

Labour spin doctor, appear to show how they openly discussed attempts  

to undermine the credibility of Iain Dale.

On Feb 4 after Mr Dale said the BBC had overreacted by sacking Carol  

Thatcher for her off-air use of the word 'golliwog', Mr Draper posted  

a message on LabourList, a Labour supporting website, which said:  

"See, even the nice seeming ones are nasty underneath".

An e-mail the same day shows Mr McBride suggesting Mr Draper "wind  

up" Mr Dale's remarks about the 'golliwog' controversy.

Mr Dale said yesterday "It proves that there was this culture at the  

heart of Downing Street that was willing to smear political opponents."

The Telegraph is playing a funny game here.  The staff is full of 
McBride cronies and this piece  appears  - in some editions at least 
- at the very bottom of page 10 relating to "EXPENSES  DAY 13" . It 
is very easy to miss and appears NOWHERE on its website.

It is as if a lawyers' letter was winging its way around the newsroom 
and to cover themselves  the editorial staff put a token story in the 
least visible place possible for the record.

What is the Telegraph playing at?

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx cs