Brown let the dogs out

When you keep a kennel of attack dogs then I guess you can’t entirely claim ignorance or absence of responsibility when one of them bites several passers by. That explains why Gordon Brown’s apologetic non-apology for the attempted muckraking of Damian McBride has failed to satisfy not just the Tories but many Labour supporters too.
 
After all, though McBride was fired for plotting to slime leading Tories, it is Labour politicians who have more often suffered at the hands of his dark arts — even supposed Brownite loyalists such as Douglas Alexander were victims. So many Labour MPs were as pleased to see McBride get his comeuppance as were the Tories — and politicians on the Right and the Left are not inclined to leave it there. This story still has legs.
 
The Prime Minister now wants a new code of conduct for special advisers — though plain folk outside the Westminster Village will wonder why what is now being proposed wasn’t already in place — but no code can produce pristine behaviour if the approach and attitude of the people you employ is steeped in attack-dog culture.