This morning Guido published his own hypocrisy dossier on Damian McBride, the author of Labour’s ‘GPC Files’. Guido combed through Damian’s 2014 book and unsurprisingly found countless examples of government waste under Gordon Brown during Damian’s time in government. Editor Paul Staines popped up on GB News this morning to run through the charges…
This week was scheduled on the Labour Party’s media grid to be “Government Procurement Card” week – exposing the “GPC files” of the Tories and their big spending ways. The Labour Press team even mocked up a fake Rishi Sunak GPC:
The reputed author of the dossier is the reformed former attack dog Damian McBride. After a time away from politics following Smeargate, McBride returned to SW1 as Emily Thornberry’s political advisor in March 2016. Thornberry being the Shadow Cabinet MP in whose name all the written questions were asked to create the GPC Files…
Damian was around for the birth of Government Procurement Cards in 1997, climbing government ranks as Labour’s GPC spending soared. His “Power Trip” book provides an explicit account of the sort of taxpayer “put it on the card” spending in the Treasury and No. 10 during his years there, for which he’s now attacking the government…
Booze
- ‘We were going to hold a proper end-of-trip party on board, and would happily serve our own drinks so they could have a break’
- ‘… if the galleys were still full of unopened bottles of champagne, wine and beer when we were on our return flight from Japan, Santiago or Cape Town, that was all booze already paid for by the hacks just waiting to be drunk’ – this last point is a fiction, the ticket charges for hacks barely covered their own flight costs.
- ‘We were going to hold a proper end-of-trip party on board and would happily serve our own drinks… [after Gordon went to bed] the hard drinking would ensue. I’d kick things off with a quiz then there’d be hours of standing around swapping war stories and jokes, a bit of singing, and … all-night sessions of poker… all while steadily draining what was left of the booze’
Private jets
- ‘If we chartered a flight from BA, Virgin or one of the occasional private airlines we used, then all the food and booze we’d normally consume on a flight was obviously thrown in as well’
- ‘Chartering a plane or, less preferably, block-booking dozens of seats on a scheduled flight was always the most expensive aspect of any overseas visit, and the way we paid for it was by inflating the fares charges to the press to subsidise the travel of Gordon and his team’ – in truth it “didn’t pay for it”, it slightly reduced the overall cost to taxpayers.
Luxury meals
- ‘Gordon did a briefing at the G8 summit in Japan about the need to tackle the world’s waste of food, and then found himself at a luxurious thirteen-course banquet laid on by the hosts that same evening’
Extracurriculars
- ‘When Gordon finally came down, Balls said: “Damian’s got a theory about this hotel to tell you.’ Before I could say anything, Gordon said: “I know, we’ve got to get out of here, this place is full of hookers’
- ‘We’d drive out to Summers restaurant and Sports Bar in Arlington on Saturday mornings, Sunday lunchtimes and weekday afternoons to catch any live Premiership or Champions League games. Gordon wouldn’t drink…’
It is clear that Damian and the Brownites particularly enjoyed their times in America. Guido has come across an old Freedom of Information release from the days when his inseparable pal Ed Balls was Education Minister and he with Damian McBride would let the government procurement card be their flexible friend when it came to drinking and dining. Remember that civil servants not ministers are the ones issued with cards. Note the thousand dollar American bar bills and the thousand pound plus dinners in two of Guido’s favourite Westminster restaurants; Osteria Dell Angelo and the Cinnamon Club:
Apart from the Freedom of Information release above, all the quotes are taken from Damian’s 2014 confessional book “Power Trip: A Decade of Policy, Plots and Spin”. Guido asked the Labour press office to confirm or deny McBride ever had a GPC of his own, or whether Labour commits to ending these practices in government. They haven’t answered…
Labour have spent the past few days taking the Tories to task over taxpayer waste – painting over their own profligacy – and one attack line in particular required particular artistic licence. Yesterday, Labour Press tweeted out a criticism of the government spending £3,393 on 13 photographs. That works out to £261 per picture for the Government Art Collection (GAC).
📸 Which minister's department spent £3,393 of public cash buying 13 fine art photographs from The Tate Gallery?
— Tory Cost of Chaos (@labourpress) February 13, 2023
Why didn’t they use the 14,700 alternatives in the Government Art Collection? We can tell you the 1st answer, the 2nd remains a mystery
➡️ https://t.co/ujdIr20IWR ⬅️ pic.twitter.com/tS2x9VSVMM
Labour could have done with expanding their focus, as targeting such waste has left their own record overexposed. In 2008 the GAC spent a stunning £88,125 on American Tan XX by Gary Hume – it hung from May-September 2008 on the wall of Gordon Brown’s office. By Guido’s calculation’s that’s over 300 times more expensive / wasteful than the purchases they are criticising. Surely Damian McBride, the former SpAd turned PAd whom is said to be behind this week’s line of attack on government procurement, will surely remember seeing this picture hanging on the wall behind Gordon as he suffered another raging tantrum from the then Chancellor?
At Foreign Office Questions this afternoon, Damian McBride Emily Thornberry took the opportunity to sting Boris by congratulating Jeremy Hunt for “not just for getting into the final two, but also being the only candidate who has the police outside his house for the right reasons!” Ouch…
Last night: @DPMcBride, @EmilyThornberry and @SeumasMilne having dinner together at Browns in Covent Garden.
— Eye Spy MP (@eyespymp) February 10, 2016
This tweet from EyeSpy suddenly makes a lot more sense – Damian McBride has been hired to be Emily Thornberry’s spin doctor. On the day of her resignation, McBride told the BBC she should’ve lied about the meaning of her flag tweet. News of the move was slipped out at 5:50pm on Friday night, the old tricks are the best…
It appears our old friend Damian McBride couldn’t resist sticking the knife in to Ed Miliband’s shambolic media operation. McBride was happy to recount the following anecdote about a grim-faced Tom Baldwin, the ex-Times hack who became Ed’s press guru.
“Tom Baldwin was in a very dark mood at a party one night. I told him ‘Tom, what have you got coming up, what are you looking forward to?’ And he just stared at his shoes for 15 seconds. And then he walked out to have a cigarette as though I’d deliberately tried to say something to offend him. I just thought he’s clearly got no good answer to that question. If you’ve got no good answer to that, if you’ve got no plan to turn it around, you can’t survive in this. When Gordon got himself deep into that territory I always kept him out of the hole by saying, ‘the next speech will turn it around’ or ‘I’ve got this great stuff we can leak about the Tories. Ed Miliband got himself into a place where just to get himself some good press he’d just deal with the Guardian and Observer and all the exclusives were given to them. It was crazy, it was just so Tom could walk around and say ‘Oh we got a good splash in the Observer.’ Who cares?”
Perhaps psycho-spinner Baldwin, whose main contribution to Miliband’s mauling was his tasteless remarks on Ed’s “Milly Dowler moment“, actually left the party to powder his nose?
