Victimisation
I read this article which appeared in the Times the other day - written by a chap called Martin Bright who used to be the Political Editor of the New Statesman, a vaguely left wing, Labour supporting magazine.
I have to say it had the ring of truth about it - because the factionalised side of the Labour Party is a very nasty party, quite capable of victimising people in this way - as the Damian McBride affair showed only too well.
Moral compass, my arse!
I lost my job because I stood up to the Brownites
Damian Bride’s memoir brought back memories of how I was forced out of the New Statesman
By Martin Bright
I read Damian McBride’s account of his time as Gordon Brown’s political hitman with a sense of horror and terrible recognition. As Political Editor of the New Statesman, known at the time as the house journal of Labour’s Brownite faction, I had a ringside seat during one of the most brutal and poisonous periods of recent political history.
During the Blair Government I enjoyed complete freedom to sound off and to run investigations, even when these targeted senior government figures and allies of the Prime Minister. I received regular briefings from “the two Eds” — Balls and Miliband — about supposed Blairite outrages and the endless negotiations for the succession.
Everything changed when Gordon Brown took over as leader. From that point on, nothing short of absolute loyalty would be tolerated. At first I used to laugh about it with the Editor, John Kampfner. Every call from a Brownite demanding a shift in the editorial line made us all the more determined not to play ball. We took particular pleasure in ignoring the increasingly desperate pleas from the magazine’s owner, Geoffrey Robinson, the MP for Coventry and a personal friend of Brown’s.
The 2008 London mayoral contest was the turning point when the gloves came off. I had been asked by Channel 4 to present aDispatches investigation into Ken Livingstone and within weeks of beginning the research I knew our findings would be damaging. We uncovered a small coterie of unelected advisers from a tiny fringe group, Socialist Action, who effectively ran London as Mr Livingstone’s personal fiefdom. The Mayor’s stance on radical Islam and his relationship with Hugo Chávez were also challenged. Within Brownite circles the programme was seen as a gross act of betrayal.
When the film was broadcast, Geoffrey Robinson took me aside and told me I should not have collaborated with Channel 4 or written for the Evening Standard, urging voters not to put Mr Livingstone back in power. I asked if he was threatening me. He laughed.
Shortly after this incident another Brownite, the caricature mockney thug Charlie Whelan, decided to threaten my wife, also a journalist, at a press awards ceremony. Rather than offer his congratulations for the nomination she had received, the charmless spinner yelled that he was going to get her husband sacked for his treachery.
By now, the atmosphere at the New Statesman was intolerable. John Kampfner, who supported me over the Livingstone film, was under increasing pressure to stick to the Brownite line. Eventually his position became impossible and he resigned. High hopes for the new multi-millionaire owner Mike Danson were dashed when he threw in his lot with the Brownites and effectively gave Mr Robinson control over the appointment of the new Editor.
I tried to hang on but I knew the game was up when I went for lunch with a former Fleet Street editor who told me that Patrick Hennessy, the Brownite political editor of the Sunday Telegraph, had been approached for the editorship and was told his first task would be to fire me.
When I eventually left the New Statesman in early 2009, it felt like a huge weight had lifted from my shoulders. Sure enough, the magazine became slavishly loyal to Mr Brown (much good that it did him) and went on to champion the rise of his political heir, Ed Milband.
What I went through was nothing compared with the treatment meted out to bigger targets such as John Reid, Charles Clarke, Ivan Lewis and, most shamefully of all, Alistair Darling. Did Gordon Brown or Ed Miliband know what was going on? As the McBride revelations demonstrate, plausible deniability was built into the system.
My story is a mere footnote of the Brown premiership but it is symptomatic of precisely the poison Damian McBride has identified in his confessional memoir. Imagine a country in Eastern Europe or Africa where the prime minister’s friend, an MP and millionaire owner of a prominent weekly magazine, removed the editor and political editor after they refused to print the government line. You would be rightly outraged. Well, it happened here.
Damian Bride’s memoir brought back memories of how I was forced out of the New Statesman
By Martin Bright
I read Damian McBride’s account of his time as Gordon Brown’s political hitman with a sense of horror and terrible recognition. As Political Editor of the New Statesman, known at the time as the house journal of Labour’s Brownite faction, I had a ringside seat during one of the most brutal and poisonous periods of recent political history.
During the Blair Government I enjoyed complete freedom to sound off and to run investigations, even when these targeted senior government figures and allies of the Prime Minister. I received regular briefings from “the two Eds” — Balls and Miliband — about supposed Blairite outrages and the endless negotiations for the succession.
Everything changed when Gordon Brown took over as leader. From that point on, nothing short of absolute loyalty would be tolerated. At first I used to laugh about it with the Editor, John Kampfner. Every call from a Brownite demanding a shift in the editorial line made us all the more determined not to play ball. We took particular pleasure in ignoring the increasingly desperate pleas from the magazine’s owner, Geoffrey Robinson, the MP for Coventry and a personal friend of Brown’s.
The 2008 London mayoral contest was the turning point when the gloves came off. I had been asked by Channel 4 to present aDispatches investigation into Ken Livingstone and within weeks of beginning the research I knew our findings would be damaging. We uncovered a small coterie of unelected advisers from a tiny fringe group, Socialist Action, who effectively ran London as Mr Livingstone’s personal fiefdom. The Mayor’s stance on radical Islam and his relationship with Hugo Chávez were also challenged. Within Brownite circles the programme was seen as a gross act of betrayal.
When the film was broadcast, Geoffrey Robinson took me aside and told me I should not have collaborated with Channel 4 or written for the Evening Standard, urging voters not to put Mr Livingstone back in power. I asked if he was threatening me. He laughed.
Shortly after this incident another Brownite, the caricature mockney thug Charlie Whelan, decided to threaten my wife, also a journalist, at a press awards ceremony. Rather than offer his congratulations for the nomination she had received, the charmless spinner yelled that he was going to get her husband sacked for his treachery.
By now, the atmosphere at the New Statesman was intolerable. John Kampfner, who supported me over the Livingstone film, was under increasing pressure to stick to the Brownite line. Eventually his position became impossible and he resigned. High hopes for the new multi-millionaire owner Mike Danson were dashed when he threw in his lot with the Brownites and effectively gave Mr Robinson control over the appointment of the new Editor.
I tried to hang on but I knew the game was up when I went for lunch with a former Fleet Street editor who told me that Patrick Hennessy, the Brownite political editor of the Sunday Telegraph, had been approached for the editorship and was told his first task would be to fire me.
When I eventually left the New Statesman in early 2009, it felt like a huge weight had lifted from my shoulders. Sure enough, the magazine became slavishly loyal to Mr Brown (much good that it did him) and went on to champion the rise of his political heir, Ed Milband.
What I went through was nothing compared with the treatment meted out to bigger targets such as John Reid, Charles Clarke, Ivan Lewis and, most shamefully of all, Alistair Darling. Did Gordon Brown or Ed Miliband know what was going on? As the McBride revelations demonstrate, plausible deniability was built into the system.
My story is a mere footnote of the Brown premiership but it is symptomatic of precisely the poison Damian McBride has identified in his confessional memoir. Imagine a country in Eastern Europe or Africa where the prime minister’s friend, an MP and millionaire owner of a prominent weekly magazine, removed the editor and political editor after they refused to print the government line. You would be rightly outraged. Well, it happened here.
