This is a thoroughly nasty story not fit for the squeamish for this
is a reasonable picture of how the media operate and how much you can
trust them.
The names are named and their ‘modus operandi’ detailed. What is
new - relatively new anyway - is how this media pig-stye has
thoroughly infiltrated Labour politics. The contagion may even have
spread further, though one hopes not.
The Telegraph is singled out here as acutely susceptible to contagion
but as many have noticed and commented the Business News in the
group’s papers seems to operate on a different plane altogether and
seems much more reliable. Could this be because it relies more on
distinguished freelance contributions ?
One must be careful to distinguish between journalists and
columnists, The former are part of this degraded ‘culture’ while the
latter must be judged individually.
xxxxxxxxxxxxx cs
===========================
Dramatis Personae
=Damian McBride - Special adviser to Gordon Brown at No:10 (formerly
at the Treasury)
= Paul Staines (alias “Guido Fawkes”) - Blogger extraordinaire -
blower of the whistle on McBride scandal - personal reputation not
totally unblemished
==Derek Draper - ex special adviser -groomed to run Red Rag Blog
until this was scrapped after the McBride scandal
==Ed Balls - Minister for higher education (with an obscure title! )
and part time spinner for Brown (and incidentally husband of Yvette
Cooper Financial Secretary to the Treasury)
=Tom Watson MP - ex Junior Minister and close friend of McBride
Lobby Friends of McBride
== Patrick Hennessy - Sunday Telegraph } these two + McBride
== Andrew Porter - Daily Telegraph } part of a beer, golf,
} football cabal.
== Kevin McGuire - columnist Daily Mirror - freelance politics
pundit for BBC
== George Pascoe Watson - The Sun
== Benedict Brogan - political commentator Daily Telegraph (until
recently at Daily Mail)
== Will Lewis - Editor Daily Telegraph
]
RETYPED - so E&OE
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
It was as long ago as December 2006 that Lord Campbell-Savours first
tabled a parliamentary question about the antics of Damian McBride,
then Gordon Brown’s special adviser at The Treasury, who had just
lambasted Sky News for allowing the Blairite Stephen Byers to comment
on Gordon Brown’s Pre-Budget Report (“Out of interest” McBride asked
sarkily, “who do you have on for Labour?”)
Campbell-Savours, an austere old Labourite was appalled: special
advisers , as civil servants, are meant to keep out of intra-party
feuding and mud-wrestling. He asked ministers “whether the contents
of the e-mail sent by special adviser Damian McBride to Sky
television complied with paragraph 14 of the code of conduct for
special advisers. and. if not what action they will take ?”
On behalf of the government Lord Mackenzie replied that “all Treasury
members of staff are expected to follow the relevant codes of conduct
for their employment, whether they are special advisers or civil
servants, but we do not discuss individual cases.” Campbell-Savours
repeated his question again in January 2007 , and, yet again in
March, but on both occasions was fobbed off with the same mantra “We
do not discuss individual cases.”
Fast forward to April 2009. When McBride’s scurrilous e-mails were
exposed, the PM and his fellow-ministers rushed t o the nearest
microphone to express their revulsion and to point out that McPoison
had been dismissed at once. Whatever happened to the stern refusal
to discuss individual cases?
Like so many political “rules”, this turns out only to apply when
ministers find it expedient, as they did in December 2006. Gordon
knew by then what sort of a chap McBride was - a red-faced lout
plotting to undermine Blairites in blithe defiance of Whitehall codes
of conduct. But as Peter Sellars used to say, he felt that “one
must have such a man.” Nobody paid much attention to Campbell-
Savours’ lone campaign and Gordon was able to enter No:10 with his
henchman at his side. For all his recent protestations of ignorance,
the thuggishness he now deplores, was the very quality he valued in
McBride.
Much of the outrage from Fleet Street hacks is equally disingenuous.
Despite all their choirboy disgust, McBride was as much the recipient
of lobby hacks’ gossip as its originator. Political insiders knew
that the McBride-mail published bu blogger Guido Fawkes was genuine
as soon as they saw that he hailed Derek Draper et al as “”Gents”.
This sort of sub-Golf Club ‘chumminess’ was very much McBride’s
style. Few of his ‘clients’ - the lobby hacks he spoonfed - were
women, He is the sort of man who addresses drinking partners as
“squire”, and, on being offered a ‘tincture’ , utters the witticism
“foolish not to”.
In Montcrieff’s Press Bar at the Commons, McBride’s lewd e-mail
theory about a female Tory MP was old hat. Unverified scuttlebutt
has long been exchanged by press bar drinkers while Clive, the
barman, innocently dries the glasses and struggles to keep the white
wine shelves stocked during the daily depredations from the Press
Association, Sky News, The Sun and certain regional newspapers
(“make it the usual, Clive’).
McBride’s best pals in the lobby, apart from Daily Mirror columnist
Kevin McGuire were Patrick Hennessy of the Sunday Telegraph, Andrew
Porter of the Daily Telegraph, George Pascoe Watson of The Sun and
Ben Brogan, until recently of the Daily Mail but now political
commentator on the Daily Telegraph. McBride’s tactic was to appeal
to Thatcherite newspaper readers dissatisfied by David Cameron’s
liberal tone.
Left wing Etonian Hennessy and wet-behind-the ears Porter are part of
a beer, golf and football cabal in the press lobby set. They spend
more time discussing Chelsea and Arsenal scores and how wellied they
got the previous night than chewing over political philosophy. They
regard earnest Blairites as “tossers” and Cameroon Tories as
‘toffs”. Management at the Mirror clearly had a shrewd idea of what
Maguire was up to with his mate Damian: the weekly column in which he
did much of McBride’s dirty work was entitled “Kevin Maguire and
Friends”. The readers seem to have twigged as well. “Just what is
the truth of Cameron’s embarrassing complaint of a highly personal
nature?” He mused on his blog last week prompting one reader to
reply: “Whatever the complaint in question, let’s hope it’s not the
one you’ve been suffering from for the last three years, Kevin.
Having his head wedged inextricably up his own arse.”
Those outside McBride[‘s gang of chums, included the dry new Labour
couple of Grauniad political editor Patrick Wintour and his wife
Rachel Sylvester now a columnist on The Times but previously on the
Telegraph. There was surprise last year when Sylvester left the
Torygraph having been there all her career. Naive onlookers thought
that the Telegraph’s editor Will” Thirsty” Lewis might have fought
hard to hold on to such a big name writer, particularly one who wrote
well-informed critical pieces about Brown. But Lewis is also a
karaoke-singing chum of Damian McBride. The Downing Street spinner,
who was seen lounging in Lewis’s office, has a capacity for drink
almost equal to that of “thirsty”. Exit Sylvester. Lewis had now
changed the entire Telegraph political team including straight-as-an-
arrow George Jones. McBride must have been delighted The last paper
to remain loyal to McBride even after his e-mail surfaced? Lewis’s
Telegraph.
The McBride media operation was not always carried out by him or at
his behest, Ed Balls sometimes pulled the strings. Junior ministers
such as Tom Watson, plus union schemer and ex-Treasury spin-doctor
Charlie Wheelan occasionally passed nuggets to trusted scribes. The
involvement of Draper suggests that Peter Mandelson (Draper’s long-
standing controller) has also had one of his long lean digits in the
pie. Mandelson could not bear being in the same room as the oafish
McBride, so Draper was detailed to meet the Brown/Balls crowd at the
sleaze frontier on his behalf.
McBride’s mitt was not on the smoking revolver last summer when
David Miliband was done in after making a clumsy bid to succeed
Gordon Brown. Miliband was described as “shitty” by a 10 Downing
Street figure. Those keen to identify that person could do worse
than study the telephone records of another McBride operative, former
Treasury special adviser, Ian Austin MP.
McBride who is only in his mid 30s (though he looks older) has not
left Downing Street a rich man. He needs a job, fast, if only to
allay fears he might spill the beans on how Brown’s No:10 works.
There is evidence he feels betrayed by the way Ed Balls disowned him
with indecent haste after the e-mail story broke. Last autumn Ben
Brogan rode to McBride’s defence when Mandelson returned to the
government and McBride was demoted after dumping on Ruth Kelly in a 3
am briefing at the Labour conference. Brogan wrote in his Mail blog
that “when the Day of Reckoning comes, Damian McBride will emerge
with great credit from this madness”. Following Ball’s disowning of
McBride Brogan used his new Torygraph blog to call Balls a liar.
And what finally of Kevin Maguire? His presence at a meeting with
Draper, McBride and Labour Party chairman Ray Collins to discuss a
[proposed] leftwing scandal blog ‘ Red Rag’. may have damaged his
lucrative sideline as a political pundit for the BBC. Shortly
after quitting McBride received an urgent message from a certain
“gent” of political journalism desperately asking him if there were
any other unexploded e-mails which might betray him as a Labour
stooge. In reply McBride replied: “What do you mean? Half of them
were your ideas in the first place!”
Gavel Basher & Friends
Tuesday 5 May 2009
PRIVATE EYE 1235 1-14.5.09
HP SAUCE
“Always The McBridesmaid, Never The McBride”
[As an aid I have added this list to make it easier to follow. It is
NOT part of the Eye’s article.
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