Gordon Brown's attack dogs
They're macho, they're male and they're out to get Gordon Brown's enemies. Meet the gang of blood brothers closest to the Prime Minister
The Lucky Voice karaoke bar in Soho does not immediately spring to mind as a venue for detailed policy discussions involving senior 10 Downing Street staff. But to a select group of young, male apparachiks and their hangers-on, the dingy Poland Street bar was a regular haunt for the gang of blood-brothers closest to the Prime Minister. On its website, the karaoke chain describes its Soho spot as “the place where it all began, the testing ground and the favourite for fanatics”. It could not have realised how right it was.
Contrary to the public perception that No 10 is a vast, complicated machine, packed with advisers, Sir Humphreys and spinmeisters, the people who yield most influence on Gordon Brown are a hand-picked, elite circle of a few men, many of whom have been with the Prime Minister since his days in the Treasury. They do not occupy endless offices in the corridors of power, but fill two sofas in Downing Street. This inner circle - which includes Damian McBride, Charlie Whelan, Ed Balls, Tom Watson, Ian Austin, and Nick Brown - have more in common with each other than their closeness to the Prime Minister. They share a keen interest in karaoke and beer. Oh, and they're all men.
Their enemies would claim further similarities. Thuggish, bully-boy characteristics, for example, employed to keep the press in line, trash rivals, seek to destroy the Tories and nurture allies. The tendency of the set to operate within tiny, select groups was nowhere more obvious than the address field of Damian McBride's e-mails that leaked out at the weekend. The suggestions to spread sleaze about David Cameron, the leader of the Opposition, and George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, was sent to just three people.
If the likes of Alastair Campbell and Lord Mandelson used metaphorical scalpels on their enemies, Brown's gang use hammers. Operating under a kind of “do you want to be in my gang-type threats”, McBride, Whelan and Balls punish journalists who write negative stories, threatening to freeze hacks out for weeks until they learn their lesson.
One journalist on The Times recalls a spat with McBride over a story that was seen to be “off message”. He was bombarded with abusive text messages, telling him how stupid he would look when the story was published, how he should have approached McBride and how his story was rubbish. In fact, the story was true.
Brown's gang of blood-brothers have used their hammers in other ways, drumming up stories about class war, hosting briefings, and delighting in personal attacks on politicians, spreading rumours that various frontbench MPs were about to be reshuffled.
In the run-up to the 2005 general election, there was a carefully constructed campaign known as Kill Mil, aimed at trashing the political career of Alan Milburn, the former Health Secretary. In the case of Charlie Whelan, who is now the spin doctor for Unite, the trade union that is a big donor to the Labour Party, private briefings were often held not in a quiet room at No 10, but in the Red Lion pub over the road from Downing Street. Pint in hand. Mobile phone in pocket.
Whelan famously bounced Tony Blair into agreeing not to join the euro for at least the length of Labour's first term, briefing journalists over the phone while standing outside the Red Lion with a beer. To be in the Whelan set, it was necessary to like lager, understand football and enjoy a late night curry at the Kennington Tandoori. And it certainly helped to be male.
One former Labour Cabinet minister told me yesterday that when recently he was appearing on Sky News, one of the editors received an e-mail from McBride: “Why have you got him on? Isn't it time you got a Labour commentator on? You should drop him.”
Brown's gang are perceived as lethal by his enemies because they are also quite smart, choosing attacks on individuals that are plausible, picking on people's weak points and adopting sexist tactics. For example, Harriet Harman, the deputy leader of the Labour Party, was “pushy”; David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, was “immature”.
Ivan Lewis, the former Health Minister, was critical of Brown last year. Shortly afterwards, details of his inappropriate advances to a female member of staff were leaked to a Sunday paper forcing him to resign. Other ministers were convinced that he was turned over by No 10 as an example to others not to step out of line at the height of the anti-Brown plotting taking place at the time.
While the culture at No 10 has always been blokeish - even under the Premiership of Margaret Thatcher - it has never been as laddish as now. Why, though, does Gordon Brown allow it to continue?
Many political observers find it almost impossible to reconcile the donnish, thoughtful, academic side of Brown, the son of the manse, obsessed with policy, with the thuggish, attack-dog mentality that his circle exhibits. Some have speculated that Brown is simply not good at the street-fighting end of politics and needs a band of brothers to both do it for him - and protect to him.
It is widely believed that Whelan was initially brought in to help voters to see Brown, not as an awkward bachelor but as a more accessible, football-watching “one of the lads”. To make the super-bright, remote man in Dunfermline East more relevant to voters.
Photographs showing Brown on a dinner date with the then Sarah Macaulay - now Sarah Brown - helped. As did stories of Brown, Whelan and Geoffrey Robinson, who was appointed Paymaster General when Labour came to power in 1997, watching football at Robinson's penthouse flat in the Grosvenor House hotel, London. Paradoxically, it was the aggressive Whelan who was charged with the delicate task of helping Brown communicate his personal side, which he is understood to have found so difficult.
At a cocktail party at No 11 Downing street, which I attended, around seven years ago, the then Chancellor squirmed at having to host an event for a roomful of biting, financial hacks. It was also clear that Brown, then scruffy and lank-haired, did not do small talk. When he did speak, it was to the carpet . He had to be bailed out by the fresh-faced Ed Balls, standing to his left, who chatted effortlessly to the assembled journalists.
While much has changed since that party, Brown clearly feels the need for his minders. He is under pressure as never before. Labour is now behind in the polls, the economy - or rather, his economy - is in trouble, and rightwing bloggers are dripping poison on the internet about the party. Life inside Downing Street must feel like a very small place against such a sea of criticism. Under such pressure to stabilise the banking system and kick-start the economy, Brown will have to rely on his trusted clique more than ever.
While the Prime Minister does have some influential female advisers - namely Sue Nye and his wife Sarah - they concentrate on organising his diary, and telling him what to wear. When it comes to politics, Brown relies on the lads.
The blokeish culture within No 10 was certainly a shock to me, having just returned from working in New York for this newspaper for a few years. Of the Wall Street egos I wrote about for The Times, those lunchtime-running banking executives are amateurs at machismo compared with Westminister.
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