Sitting in a London hotel, Damian McBride has just returned from the British Labour Party's annual conference in Brighton, one dominated in part by Power Trip, his recently published memoir about his time working as a special adviser to Gordon Brown when the latter was chancellor of the exchequer and prime minister.
McBride had been the story previously. In 2009 he quit Brown’s side after it emerged that he had planned to establish a “dirty tricks” website to blacken political enemies’ names.
Everything was fair game then: the sexual orientation of opponents, their marital troubles and their weaknesses. McBride, who peppered Power Trip with expressions of self- loathing, professes to be contrite. Despite admitting many sins in Brown's service, however, he bristles at what he perceives to be unfair charges.
“I have always taken umbrage at being blamed for things I hadn’t done,” he says.
Former Labour foreign secretary David Miliband "has always thought that I was responsible for a story that he couldn't father children," says Bride. "I wasn't."
During his years in the treasury and 10 Downing Street, McBride was corrupted by politics, he says, but not because of Brown.
“It is a business that can corrupt people that are corruptible. I don’t mean that in a financial sense, but people get sucked into the lifestyle.
“It is a lifestyle without many boundaries: there’s alcohol and power. I found that the longer I was in the worse my behaviour became.”
Background checks
Born to Irish parents in north London, McBride joined the British civil service's "fast stream" in the 1990s having acquired in Cambridge a good degree and a reputation for drunken fights. Background checks on his father, who came from Gweedore in Donegal, "had kicked up some concerns", he says, recalling a recruitment interview. "'Would you describe your father as an Irish nationalist?' 'What about his family?' 'How often do you travel to Donegal?' 'Do you meet your cousins there? 'Have any of your cousins ever spoken to you about Irish nationalism?'
“I knew what specifically she was driving at. Rather than have it crushed out of me, I told her up front exactly what I knew about my dad’s cousin who had served time for IRA-related offences,” he says.
The security agency MI5 later sought to recruit him, he believes, sending him a letter “with no heading, address, or signatory”, a 20-page questionnaire and an invitation to a country retreat.
Despite an instruction not to speak to anyone, he “checked with a friend at the foreign office, who confirmed that the letter sounded like it was from the secret services”.
“Given the Canary Wharf bomb had recently gone off, he concluded that ‘It’s probably because they need more Paddies’,” before admonishing McBride for talking about it.
“Paying that no heed, I headed down to London that night for a friend’s birthday and I took along the questionnaire to show my mates,” he wrote. In the pub he boasted “that I was going to be the next James Bond, or – after I’d had a few pints of Guinness – the next David Neligan [who spied in Dublin for Michael Collins].
“It was a long night on the town and, almost inevitably, I woke up in the morning minus one questionnaire. I rang the number on the cover letter.
“[I] explained – to silence at the other end – that I had spilled ink on the questionnaire and needed a replacement. A clipped female voice said: ‘Just fill it in as best you can.’ ‘Ah, but I’ve thrown it away now.’ ‘Well, you shouldn’t have done that,’ she replied. ‘We can’t offer you a replacement.’ She hung up. If the intention was to assess whether I was spy material, they and I both found out in a hurry.”
Over coffee, McBride is clear about national loyalties: “I regard myself as Irish rather than English. If Ireland were coming to play England we’d be getting tickets at the Irish end.”
His ties with Gweedore have loosened: “I don’t visit Donegal much any more because the uncle and aunts have died off. I visit Dublin quite a lot, though. I went to see Donegal win the All-Ireland last year. It is a big part of my life, part of my culture: the music I listen to, the books I read. It feels who I am.”
Charlie McCreevy
McBride's memoir sheds light on the failure in 2004 of French bureaucrat Jean Lemierre campaign to head the International Monetary Fund and the supporting role played in the episode by Charlie McCreevy.
Brown wanted former Spanish finance minister Rodrigo Rato to get the job rather than the French bureaucrat, who was favoured by many other EU finance ministers attending a meeting in Ireland.
Emerging during a break in the meeting, Brown told McBride: “They’ve agreed to say Rato’s a candidate and it’s evenly split between him and Lemierre. But I’ve written Charlie a note to read out if anyone asks him what attributes we’re looking for. So get one of our guys [in the British press corps] to ask about attributes in the press conference.”
McBride continued: "One of 'our guys' did, Charlie read out the note as advised, explaining that the EU was looking for someone with good links to emerging markets and developing nations, and with the political skills required to handle difficult negotiations. Sure enough, every paper wrote the next day that Rato was now the clear favourite and Lemierre's candidacy had suffered a mortal blow."
Viciousness
The viciousness at New Labour's heart was not unique – the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher had it too.
“Up to 2006 Labour was the only show in town. Blair and Brown were the only show in town. Every minister and MP defined themselves by what camp they were in,” McBride says.
“There’ll always be conflict in politics, there’ll always be soap opera, there are always stand-offs. It can be more brutal when it is internal. You know more about each other, you know what you are up to. I wasn’t not looking for opportunities to attack the Tories but you don’t know what they are up to to the same extent.”
