LEAKING AND LYING: DAMIEN McBRIDE AND THE POLITICS OF THE URINAL


There is a whine that goes up around the Westminster commentarati, usually around election time, respecting the public’s disengagement with politics. This takes the form of bemoaning public apathy and cynicism.

The so called ‘Westminster Village,’ as it likes to characterise itself, makes several profound errors when estimating the public mood, they confuse apathy with impotence and anger, and cynicism with contempt.  If you want to understand the roots of this mood you need look no further than the serialised memoirs of former ‘spin-doctor’ Damien McBride.

Here is a man who seems to have ostensibly devoted a good portion of his life to feeding half truths or downright lies about fellow members of the Labour Party to the press, -the Tories simply didn’t feature in his malign consciousness, they were never the real enemy.

Here is a man who was employed by the Labour party, whom we must therefore assume identified with the Labour struggle, who just over a year before the next general election sells details of his disgusting past behaviour to, of all papers, The Daily Mail, in the knowledge that the Mail will use this ammunition to discredit Ed Miliband and the Labour party. For this he is very handsomely rewarded, over £130,000 according to the Guardian.[1] McBride would surely have advised Judas, "you sold yourself too cheap."

Mr McBride also manifests that other particularly unpleasant characteristic of the exhibitionist delinquent, self pity. Thus a certain Ian Dale, who seems to be speaking on Mr McBride’s behalf, complains. “He will be denounced for raking over old coals. He will be criticised for taking the Mail's shilling. Those who denounce him loudest are probably those who dropped him like a stone when he most needed them." Cry me a river.

How do you characterise such a man? Insect analogies come to mind, but this feels a bit hard on our perennially close neighbours, unfair, for example, on the humble cockroach. For Mr McBride’s ‘Job’ was, amongst other things, to spread lies about "drug use, alcoholism and extramarital affairs." He seems to have been completely relaxed about destroying people’s lives.

I think he is more like a rather sordid old man who spends his days loitering  around public toilets where, at home with the smell of faeces and urine, he can leak his dirty little secrets to hearts content.

The disgusting Mr McBride
In years of frequenting the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous I learnt one thing about confessional culture, the things people are really ashamed of they never share openly; all those truly shocking stories are relayed always with a sneaking pride in the horror of it all. Thus it is with Mr McBride, who, one suspects, giggles as he exposes the depth of his deviousness, depravity and cruelty.

He would merely be the subject of contempt, a moral bankrupt, possibly even to be pitied for his lack of normal decency, but Mr McBride is, unfortunately, not alone, he represents a particularly disgusting example of a political elite who despise the electorate and see politics as merely an amoral political game. They pollute the political health of this country and soil everyone they come into contact with.


[1] http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/sep/20/daily-mail-paid-mcbride-memoir McBride appeared to make much of the fact that he will be donating sales revenue of the book too charity, omitting that he will be pocketing the considerable serial rights.

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