Smeargate update

Guido Fawkes has the best updates on this and saves me having to buy papers such as the News of the World. You can read extracts from the NOTW's findings about who really knew about RedFlag's formation and it wasn'y just Derek Draper and Damian McBride:

"A new email shows that Labour’s General Secretary Ray Collins chaired a secret meeting to create the Red Rag website now ensnared in the Smeargate scandal.

The email’s existence links the dirty tricks site to the very TOP of the Labour Party.

And it exposes the LIE, put out by Downing Street, and repeated by government ministers this week, that the smears project was just a minor aberration cooked up by a couple of renegades acting alone—and which would never have seen light of day.

The new email, written by Labour’s then internet campaign chief Derek Draper, PROVES that the meeting took place, reveals WHO was there, WHERE it was held and WHAT was on the agenda. It shows that Collins travelled across Westminster for a summit in the offices of trade union bigwig Charlie Whelan. Whelan, one of Gordon Brown’s closest friends and his former chief spin doctor, was described last night by a Labour insider as the Prime Minister’s “unofficial Mr Fix-It”.

Joining Collins and Whelan at the meeting were the two men whose leaked smear emails later brought the scandal to light: Damian McBride and Draper."

This piece is even more interesting, if true it takes the RedFlag idea and its way of operating to the heart of Gordon Brown's inner circle.

Meanwhile The Times claims that (and I am trying to sound surprised at this "revelation") :

"ED BALLS, the schools secretary, used Damian McBride, the disgraced spin doctor, to smear ministerial rivals and advance his own ambitions, a Downing Street whistleblower has claimed.
In an explosive new twist to the e-mail affair, a No 10 insider has revealed that Balls was the mastermind behind a “dark arts” operation by McBride to undermine colleagues. He claims the education secretary is running a destabilising “shadow operation” inside Downing Street to clear his path for the party leadership if Labour loses the next election.

The insider said: “There is now an operation within an operation at No 10 and it answers to Ed Balls.” The whistleblower, who has had a ringside seat on the power struggles inside No 10, claims that Balls:

— Engineered McBride’s move from civil servant to special adviser
— Repeatedly protected McBride when colleagues called for him to be sacked
— Was in constant contact with McBride, sending him up to 20 e-mails a day
— Instructed McBride to brief against cabinet rivals
— Exploits a weekly “strategy” meeting, which he chairs at Downing Street, to shore up his power base.

The whistleblower claims the prime minister is “strangely naive” about Balls’s activities: “He doesn’t see what’s going on. He unwittingly helps Ed by sidelining the ministers Ed sees as a threat.” All the claims are denied by Balls, who labelled them “completely fabricated and malevolent nonsense”. A spokesman for Brown also dismissed the claims.

Senior Labour figures have confirmed there is widespread anxiety about Balls’s activities. The revelations will fuel concern that the government is in terminal decline, with senior ministers more worried about positioning themselves for life after defeat than about rescuing the economy. The whistleblower, who has never spoken to the media before, was prompted to speak out through loyalty to Brown and the Labour party. He was angered by an interview given by Balls last week in which he distanced himself from McBride, who was forced to resign over plans to spread scurrilous rumours about senior Tories."

I say 'let Ed Balls take over from Gordon Brown'; I can think of few Labour "big beasts" who are as unlovable as Ed Balls (Harriet Harman) excepted of course.