McBride: Miliband And I Were Friends For Years

Damian McBride has claimed he and Ed Miliband had “four years of real friendship” before the politician stepped back to protect his own career.

Mr Miliband has attempted to distance himself from the bitter feuds and plots revealed by Gordon Brown’s former spin doctor in his book.

But in the latest extracts, Mr McBride says they were friends for years until they fell out over the decision not to call a snap election in 2007.

He claims he was unfairly accused of trying to blame Mr Miliband and Douglas Alexander for the move not to go to the country.

Quotes from “insiders” appeared in the press attacking the two men but Mr McBride insists he was not behind them.

In his new book Power Trip, he claims Mr Miliband had found a “convenient person to blame” so that he could disconnect himself from Mr Brown’s inner circle.

He recounts how he tried to convince the future Labour leader that he had nothing to do with the briefings but that Mr Miliband rejected his pleas in a mechanical tone.

“I started ranting about how ridiculous it was that I was being accused of briefing against people. ‘You know I wouldn’t brief against you,’ I told him,” he wrote.

“‘I don’t believe you, Damian,’ he said, something in his voice and tone reminding me of Hal the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. ‘I think you’re lying.’”

Mr McBride says he told Mr Miliband “you know we’re finished” if he kept calling him a liar, to which he apparently replied: “I don’t care Damian, I think we are finished.”

The book adds: “The call ended. I was totally stunned. Eight years of working together, four years of real friendship, all destroyed in two minutes – and over something that wasn’t true.”

Mr McBride said an unnamed Labour MP later told him he was behind the briefings against Mr Alexander and apologised, so he called an aide to Mr Miliband to tell him.

“If I was hoping that would lead to a reconciliation, I was disappointed. My friend came back and said rather sadly that when he’d told Ed the story, he’d just shrugged and said: ‘Oh well.’

“The reality was that Ed didn’t particularly care whether I was guilty or not; I was just a convenient person to blame.

“Why? Because that created the impression he’d been wronged by someone close to Gordon and Balls. That, in turn, allowed him to get some distance from the sinking ship in No 10, plus some victim status with Labour MPs. And it worked.”

Details of the toxic infighting within the Labour administration during the Blair-Brown years have cast a shadow over the party conference in Brighton this week.

Mr Miliband, who is battling to keep the focus on his cost-of-living plans, insists he was never involved in the “reprehensible” briefings exposed in the memoirs.

The Labour leader said he had urged Mr Brown to sack the controversial figure amid suspicions about his behaviour, which he said were “not my kind of politics”.

On Monday, shadow chancellor Ed Balls called Mr McBride “despicable” as he was also forced to deny giving negative briefings against colleagues while in government.

Both he and Mr Miliband were key members of Mr Brown’s inner circle. Mr Balls has acknowledged there was a “macho culture” but insists the party has now changed.

“This kind of negative, nasty briefing is wrong. But I think also it’s a thing of the past. The Blair/Brown era is gone,” he said.

“It is not how Ed Miliband and I are doing things in the Labour Party today. There’s been none of it for the last three or four years. Thank goodness for that. We’re in a better place now.”

Tony Blair’s former spin doctor Alastair Campbell told Sky News on Monday that he believed Labour could still be in power had it not been for the destructive behaviour.

“I think one of the reasons we have this Conservative-led coalition government is because of the behaviour of people like McBride who frankly should never have been there,” he said.

“Gordon Brown should never have had him, Charlie Whelan and others in the system.

“What McBride has done is admit the truth that we knew back then – that Gordon… had some people around him who, frankly, to my mind, were pretty evil.”

McBride: Miliband And I Were Friends For Years