Damian McBride was a Whitehall civil servant, with a particular expertise in VAT, and then more famously a close advisor to Prime Minister Gordon Brown, in which role he became notorious for his aggressive media tactics before having to resign in a scandal over leaked emails.
You certainly shouldn’t take as an instruction manual Ryan Holiday’s accounts of how he regularly manipulated, bamboozled and fooled bloggers and the media into running false, exaggerated and self-serving stories. … Read the full post »
The newly updated paperback version of Damian McBride’s Power Trip adds but a little to the original hardback edition. … Read the full post »
Many British journalists are so keen to have a good story to run, they are easily bought off and distracted by government spin doctors… … Read the full post »
Putting the Autumn Statement, with its decisions by Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander, under the microscope – and discovering what Christmas present Simon Hughes got for party members. That’s what you got with Liberal Democrat Newswire #42 when it hit email inboxes last week. … Read the full post »
Liberal Democrat Newswire #41 looks at how Nick Clegg is taking an improbable leaf out of Liberator’s book, debates in the party over what the word “weekend” means and a special offer for readers from Biteback Publishing. … Read the full post »
When writing about spin doctors smearing political opponents in the media, remember that your colleagues who ran the stories bear no responsibility. … Read the full post »
Many of the pieces written about British political parties and the internet are rather duff because they are written by people who (a) have never run an election in their life, (b) don’t like politicians and (c) are extremely keen on the internet. … Read the full post »
What do Bob Quick, Damian McBride and Den Dover MEP all have in common? They have all been caught up in a public scandal (security lapse, smears, expense claims). … Read the full post »
The murky underworld of sleaze and gossip which permeates the backdoor politics – and most walks of life where power, money, or the lack of it, matter – existed before the internet was invented. … Read the full post »
Emails which made a number of unfounded, innuendo-laden suggestions about the private lives of David Cameron, George Osborne and other Conservative MPs, have come into the possession of Paul Staines, who writes the Guido Fawkes political blog. … Read the full post »