McBride quits
Fraser Nelson 5:18pm
So, it's happened. The News of the World has confirmed that Damian McBride has quit - and I understand that it will tomorrow publish the emails at the centre of the storm. The logic for the resignation is clear. McBride broke two cardinal rules for spin doctors: 1) Never become the story, and 2) Never, ever screw up during a bank holiday because the story just mushrooms - there's nothing else to fill the news pages*.
Damiangate had, through the course of today, taken on its own, awesome momentum. The options for No10 were clear: if McBride stayed, then tomorrow's newspapers (and Monday's, and Tuesday's) would be choc full of grim stories about black arts, smear tactics, hit men - a real diet of super-ugly news. And it wouldn't be Tories on the attack, but the likes of Charles Clarke and the many other Labour figures who have a score to settle with McBride. There's no sight more vicious than a Labour civil war.
So McBride has done a Bob Quick (but without the £110k pension). His motivation is clear: go now, and he will minimise the bad coverage - and, most importantly, there's a chance of rehabilitation by the general election campaign. Meanwhile I suspect he'll pop up in a Labour-related institution: a union (like Whelan) a think-tank (like Twigg) or somesuch. So this is not goodbye to McBride, but au revoir. He's too effective for Brown to axe completely.
* Ask Charlie Whelan, who hit the rocks during Christmas 1998.
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Frank P
April 11th, 2009 5:47pm Report this commentGod - he even looks like Bob Quick. Yet another confirmation that physical ugliness is one of the prerequisites (causes even) of leftist political thinking.
john miller
April 11th, 2009 5:56pm Report this commentYeah, we was "demoted" after the Ruth Kelly resignation so this means he'll be chairman of the IPPR...
Kevyn Bodman
April 11th, 2009 6:01pm Report this commentHere's an even more important cardinal rule I would like to see in place for spin doctors:
Don't spread malicious, offensive, untrue stories about opponents.
Good Heavens, there is a right way to behave,and a wrong way. We all know that, don't we?
Does McBride think he was acting properly?
Of course he doesn't.
Mistakes are inevitable, understandable and forgiveable.
But deliberate dishonest malice falls into a different category.
Austin Barry
April 11th, 2009 6:03pm Report this commentWhen the Cabinet is such a squalid, shifty cadre of liars and expense-fiddlers, why should we be surprised by any of this? Gordon 'Ceauşescu' Brown should be ashamed, but no doubt will remain: a grim, glum charmless lump of congealed porrage without honour or courage.
Thomas Cussans
April 11th, 2009 6:05pm Report this commentAt the risk of stating the obvious – something of a forte of mine – this is a huge story. Massive.
The blogosphere, almost entirely thanks to the anarchic efforts of Guido, for whom no praise is too high, has brilliantly highlighted the daily diet of lies put out by Downing St, in which the MSM has been shown to be properly complicit.
The real nature of McNasty's neo-Stalinist style of government-by-thuggish-threat-and-lies has been starkly revealed.
However much No. 10 attempts to play this off as a spate between irrelevant bloggers no-one has heard of, I suspect this is going to run and run and run.
McThuggo outed at last.
Interesting how not a single member of the government has been heard today, no?
What happens when No. 10's instant claim that no-one other than McBride was involved in these 'juvenile' e-mails is proved to be another lie?
Oh! How I'd love it if McRound-the-Bend's involvement could be proved.
I can't wait for tomorrow,
Then it gets seriously interesting.
RW
April 11th, 2009 6:22pm Report this comment"There's no sight more vicious than a Labour civil war. "
Except that of Labour pretending to govern this country? while subjecting us to an endless torrent of lies and crazy authoritarianism, and enthusiastically filling its pockets and its boots at our expense.
Tiberius
April 11th, 2009 7:57pm Report this comment"Oh! How I'd love it if McRound-the-Bend's involvement could be proved."
Thomas: we can dream!
MartSharm
April 11th, 2009 8:21pm Report this commentDear all,
If this were the only story to taint an otherwise benevolent Government it would be shocking.
But this is the icing on the cake. On top of everything that has happened, this is the proof of the Devil within Labour.
This is the story that breaks through the inertia of those not ordinarily involved with day-to-day politic and exposes the anti-morals of the current non-democratic incumbents.
Long may it reign.
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