How well did Damian McBride know Ed Balls ? Is he surprised at the scale of interest and hostility towards his book? How strong was his relationship with Ed Miliband? Did journalists ever suspect he was feeding them untruths? Fraser Nelson puts all these questions to the former Labour spin doctor on this week’s View from 22 podcast (21:00), in light of his memoirs Power Trip, published this week.
Labour conference is now over and three of Westminster’s top political commentators give us their opinion on how it went. Mehdi Hasan of the Huffington Post thinks it was ‘flat, flat, flatter than a pancake’, Dan Hodges of the Telegraph thinks Miliband’s speech was ‘poised, confident and played to his strengths ‘ while Kevin Maguire of the Daily Mirror reckons Miliband has produced an ‘authentic social democrat’ message the country is crying out for.
Plus, James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman look forward to the Tory conference (30:43) next week and why David Cameron needs to exploit Ukip and Nigel Farage to reunite the right.
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