Lies, damned lies, and emails

In his long preparations for next Wednesday’s Budget, Alistair Darling must have constantly asked himself: could the challenge possibly be more gruelling? The task facing the Chancellor was always going to be formidable: he cannot go on borrowing without limit, amassing undreamed-of fiscal deficits in order to maintain inflated levels of public spending. Indeed, the danger point is fast approaching at which the gilts market will no longer absorb the torrent of new debt, and an IMF bail-out will become a serious prospect.

As Frank Field warns on page 10, this Chancellor or his successor will clearly be obliged to put a freeze on day-to-day spending, and take an axe to a range of pet government projects and quangos. Sooner or later, as the Pre-Budget Report acknowledged, some taxes will surely increase, on the model of the recent Irish emergency budget. These are incredibly sensitive and difficult decisions: higher taxes might be politically easier to impose on the corporate sector rather than upon individuals, for example, but recovery depends on the health and vigour of business.

The McBride affair has therefore turned an already Herculean challenge for the Chancellor into an outright political nightmare: as the email scandal continues to rage, Mr Darling is under stupendous pressure to get the government on to the front foot again. Even in benign economic conditions that would be a difficult task. Now it looks next to impossible.

The emails between Damian McBride, one of the PM’s closest aides before his enforced resignation on Saturday, and Derek Draper, a Labour blogger, mark a new low in mainstream political culture in this country. This uniquely ugly episode has nothing to do with the role of special advisers or the daily rough-and-tumble of ‘spin’. What has been disclosed is nothing less than a systematic dirty tricks operation, orchestrated in Number 10 itself, with the intention of smearing senior Tories and spreading lies about their medical histories, the mental health of their spouses, and their sexual proclivities.