Damien McBride, Special Adviser to the Chancellor, was overheard talking loudly to David Cracknell of the Sunday Times in the Albannach Bar on Trafalgar Square on the Friday before last. Unaware he was being listened to, he told Cracknell that plans were afoot to replace the Deputy Prime Minister with David Miliband. Lo and behold the story appeared on the front page of the Sunday Times this week. It was attributed to a Downing Street source. What Cracknell failed to tell his readers was that his source was in fact No. 11 and not No. 10 but then that would have ruined his story wouldn’t it……
Ian Austin MP, another known ‘friend’ of the Chancellor‘, let off steam to other Labour MPs this week when he moaned that the No. 10 press office, and that David Hill in particular, had ‘messed up’ the leaking of the Desmond Swayne emails. He asked if there were anymore – we assume he thought he could do a better job. What is interesting though is that words very similar to those he used to his colleagues appeared in a Telegraph piece by Graeme Wilson and attributed to a Labour source. No coincidence is my guess.
