The penance of Damian McBride continues. After being ejected from No10, and disowned by his mentor Ed Balls, I can reveal that our antihero now has a new job – head of media at the Catholic overseas aid charity CAFOD. He will be doubtless be brilliantly effective at briefing against its enemies (in CAFOD’s case, hunger and the devil). I imagine the pay is several leagues below what he’d get from cashing in on his notoriety and publishing a hit man’s confessions.
The weird thing is that McBride could have done so well, had he steered clear of Balls. He was a Treasury civil servant, specialising in VAT, before Balls trained him up in the art of character assassination. Balls and Brown plucked him, Mowgli-like, and made him their hit man. But he was (and is) intelligent, cheerful, hardworking, and amiable to those he regarded as useful.
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