Okay – to be clear what Damian McBride did was plain wrong as well as stupid. He fell on his “sword” (or scribe, pen, QWERTY board – whatever media advisers fall upon) pretty swiftly and resigned. The Prime Minister, Gordon Brown sent out handwritten letters of deep regret and has now “finally” according to last nights 6pm BBC News “apologised”. Cue to picture of Osborne saying “it’s a bit late”.Now all week we have been subjected to various Tories pontificating at length about this and that. I thought that this was all just a little rich. I am not a Westminster village insider, but anyone who doesn’t think that senior Tory officials have not had similar emails exchanges or meetings about slurring Labour Politician’s as those between McBride and Draper are living in cloud cuckoo land. I would have thought that maybe some recognition that “there but the grace of God” humility by the Tories would have been appropriate if they really want to “clean up” the body politics.
By co-incidence I’ve been away recently and it was only last night that I caught up with and read last weeks Sunday papers. This extract from Paddy Ashdown’s autobiography in the Sunday Times review I think is apt. “...we discovered after the election that that some Tories had imported a group of US activists called “the Nerds” whose job was to spread malign rumours and make unfounded personal accusations against senior opposition MPs...after the election Kelvin MacKenzie then editor of The Sun, revealed that at least one cabinet-level Tory minister had approached him seeking to retail scurrilous and untrue allegations against a number of senior opposition MPs.”
Nuff said?
UPDATE: No there is more -Leftygirl tells it as it is here
UPDATE 2: The plot thickens - check out today's Sunday Mirror
