Douglas Alexander urged Gordon Brown to sack McBride

Ed Miliband is not the only person who wanted Gordon Brown to sack Damian McBride. At an IPPR fringe event this evening, Douglas Alexander told The Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland he urged the Prime Minister to sack McBride over media briefings that his sister Wendy should be sacked; briefings which McBride claimed came from Douglas:

‘I did urge Gordon to dismiss someone, it was Damian McBride. That might explain the way he has briefed against me then and writes about me now.

‘Listen, I was always a supporter of my sister. The politics that he represents is destructive, divisive and ultimately, deeply damaging to our politics and our cause.

‘That was the view I held then — I expressed it on a number of occasions. It’s what he did and what he does. I’m glad it’s now a postscript on Labour’s history.’