Though it has been barely noticed abroad, all the British newspapers and TV stations and blogs have spent the whole weekend covering one of the nastiest episodes in UK politics for quite some time.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown's closest special advisor, Damian McBride, has been forced to resign over emails sent to former Spin Doctor Derek Draper and others, co-ordinating an aborted smear operation against leading Conservative politicians and their wives.
The smears were said to involve unfounded or completely fabricated rumours to be launched on a renegade Labour website that they were founding called Red Rag. This was to be the deniable sister-site to LabourList, which Draper had set up with the support of very senior figures in the party only months previously.
The emails, sent from a Number 10 email address, have not been published in full - fears over legal action and sheer obscenity are the reasons given, but they came into the hands of anarchic right-wing blogger Guido Fawkes, who gave them ('for pleasure not profit') to the national newspapers in revenge for smears launched by McBride and Draper against him.
Ever since Draper arrived on the political scene in the entourage of Lord Mandelson, he has caused trouble. He was forced to resign over being caught offering access for cash by a newspaper journalist saying "there are 17 people who matter in government, and to say I am intimate with each of them would be the understatement of the century".
He left politics, and took a degree at the Wright Institute in Berkeley (not at Berkeley as was ambiguously reported upon his return) in psychotherapy. When he launched Labourlist, it's stated mission was to stand up to the right-wing dominance of the blogosphere in the UK. However, it quickly garnered a poor reputation for being centralised and controlling, and for concerning itself with hatchet jobs and flame wars rather than actually providing a forum for Labour members. Criticism of the party was prohibited at the outset, though is now allowed, and Draper found himself in quite personal conflict with the major conservative bloggers - Gudo Fawkes, Iain Dale - as well as the leading lights of the Left wing blogosphere like Tim Ireland at Bloggerheads.
Draper accepts that he asked McBride and others to come up with stories that were too hot for Labourlist to run, and could instead be used for 'Red Rag'. McBride obliged copying in allies at UNITE (the union funding LabourList), friendly journalists, and according to some reports (denied) a Minister in the Cabinet Office (who sits next to McBride and has, amongst his titles, Minister for Digital Engagement).
The rumours ranged from the nasty to the brutal - that the wife of the Shadow Chancellor was mentally unstable, that the Leader of the Opposition had an STD (a potential cause of the cerebral palsy that recently took the life of his young son), that another Tory MP was abusing his position to help a gay boyfriend, and that another femae Tory MP had had an affair with a colleague, leaving behind sex toys. She is now threatening to sue for libel. The Shadow Chancellor was to be shown in faked photos wearing women's clothes with a blacked-up face, and rumours to be circulated that he had slept with prostitutes.
All this was written from a desk outside the Prime Minister's office, by a Special Advisor paid for by the taxpayers, who's job demanded that he resile from partisan activities.
I can't begin to give the full account of this story in this space, but the disgust is being felt across the political spectrum. The sense of moral decay in politics in the UK is at an all-time high. I have never read so many compaisons of a British PM to Richard Nixon.
What is most painful for the left at the moment is that this feels exactly like the manner in which Karl Rove acted from his office in the West Wing. The dehumanisation of political opponents, and the smearing of their families is exactly where the arrogance of power leads, if it is not held in check by truly moral character.
The biggest surprise of the weekend - that McBride was smearing the Opposition. For all the yers that Brown coveted the Prime Minister's job, the vast majority of victims were in the Labour Party. Blair had Alistair Campbell, Peter Mandelson and Derek Draper on his side of the fence, but Brown was rarely outgunned with Charlie Whelan, Damian McBride and Ed Balls on his.
This sorry saga unveils the nastiness that has infected the top of Labour, but has captured a rare moment of unity between the junior Blairite and Brownite factions. Most of the victims of the last 12 years have been men and women of the left, who are today rejoicing that Damian McBride is no longer in Number 10.
Must read links:
Guido Fawkes (broke the story):
http://www.order-order.com (see the Seen Elsewhere links on the right-hand side)
LabourList (run by Derek Draper): http://www.labourlist.org
Iain Dale (Conservative) - record of some of the coverage:
http://www.iaindale.blogspot.com/...
Plato Says - the most exhaustive round up I could find
http://plato-says.blogspot.com/...