Panic in Downing Street

You probably missed it, because how the hell can anyone keep up with this stuff? But, I just happened to chance upon a couple of comments (numbers 269 and 276) on this at Guido’s, both of which had, copied and pasted into them, this:

Downing Street in ‘meltdown’

PRWeek – David Singleton 15-Apr-09

Downing Street was this week in ‘meltdown’ as Gordon Brown’s inner circle attempted to limit the fallout from the Damian McBride scandal.

Well-placed sources told PRWeek there was mounting fear in the heart of Downing Street that fresh revelations about senior MPs could emerge over the next few weeks and months leading up to the general election.

Brown’s close lieutenants such as Ed Balls, Tom Watson and Ian Austin are all believed to be vulnerable. It is feared fresh stories could be revealed by the handful of journalists who were fed negative stories by the Brown camp – or as a result of further emails that were sent to Labour blogger Derek Draper being made public.

One Downing Street insider said there had been ‘endless conference calls and crisis meetings’ since the story of McBride’s plans to smear senior Tories broke on Saturday.

The source added: ‘This is a full on disaster for Gordon – Downing Street is in meltdown. But it is more of a problem for Brown’s inner circle than it is for the Government more broadly.

‘The great fear of Brownites is that all of their activities over many years are suddenly now at risk of spilling out. It is an open secret that Gordon’s operation has been carrying out character assassinations, leaking documents and briefing against ministers and so on, but nobody has ever caught them red handed – until now. Now they have been caught out, it becomes legitimate to talk about all the other occasions.

‘It is a bit like getting Al Capone on his tax returns; it is actually one relatively minor misdemeanour – by no means are those emails the worst thing that Brown’s operation has ever done.’

Another source with close links to Downing Street said the PM’s defence was looking increasingly fragile: ‘Brown has had to stake his defence on this being a rogue operation, a single aberration that nobody else knew anything about.

‘The worry is that someone will produce evidence that it went much wider than this handful of emails and it went much wider than McBride.’

Which they will, because it did.

In short, matters are developing exactly as I told you they would in this posting. Brown’s ludicrous claim not to believe in dirty tricks has turned this from a few dogs chasing a small smear of dirt (The Emails and who knew what about them and whether anyone had tried to spread the particular smears in them) into a thousand dogs swimming happily in a quarter of a century of liquified shit, and now, too late, Downing Street realises it. But, like I say, it’s too late.

These people are smart enough to realise the terminal mess they are now in. Good. Nobody is smart enough to extricate them from it. Good again.