The news that McBride’s book will upset Labour conference has caused a flutter today. Many of his old allies have popped up to help the re-branding exercise. No doubt they will be salivating at the prospect of the serialisation rights, hence why no one has noted that the deal will earn Mad Dog far more than the royalties he has pledged to give away. Looking back at his recent blogposts shows the level of detail we can expect about the Brown years; one thing stuck out about his latest musing though:

“As our internal polls used to tell us, there were a number of Tory leaders who could potentially have beaten Tony Blair in 2005, and Hague was arguably one of them.”

You have to wonder what a Civil Servant at the Treasury was doing having access to “internal polls” in 2005. What internal polls? Surely the Treasury were not polling this sort of information? A Labour source familiar with that particular period does not recall any Labour Party poll commissioned on the subject. Was this done by that famous impartial charity the Smith Institute? If not, who paid for it and was money declared? What else will Damian let out of the bag about doing Gordon’s leadership dirty work on the taxpayer?