Damian McBride’s departure will be spun by his successors as the honourable conduct of a man whose loose talk (or, in this case, emails) became known to the wrong people, compelling his resignation. As McBride – or “McPoison” as Peter Mandelson used to call him – heads off into the night, the Government’s official line will be: “business as usual”. We will be encouraged to think that this was a trivial story which spiralled out of control, forcing a back-room adviser to fall on his sword.
Don’t believe a word of it (as if you would). These messages were sent from a Downing Street email address, by an adviser to HM Government whose salary you, as a taxpayer, paid until his resignation this afternoon. It is a mark of a truly corrupt regime that it ceases to understand, morally or intellectually, the distinction between party and government: for those who suffer from this delusion, the smearing of Labour’s opponents is intrinsically in the public interest precisely because it is in the party interest.
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