Smears never die. That is the beauty and horror of them. Once the lie or (in Gordon Brown's parlance) "unsubstantiated claim" is released, it sticks; the smear is forever associated with the smeared, in the public's subconscious and now by Google, however energetically it is refuted. That is especially true when the slur cleverly extrapolates from existing facts or perceptions. So the calumnies that caused a scandal in Downing Street this week are sure to adhere. The question is, to whom?rnThe story so far: Damian McBride, a spin-doctoring aide very close to Mr Brown, devised a series of lurid smears about David Cameron, the Conservative leader, George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, his wife and others. They were meant for use on a scurrilous new website to be run by Derek Draper, a disgraced lobbyist turned psychotherapist turned re-disgraced internet propagandist, and were e-mailed to him from Mr McBride's Downing Street address. Though the innuendoes were never deployed as intended, the e-mails were obtained by Paul Staines, a caustic anti-government blogger. Mr McBride resigned on April nth.rnThe aim of Mr Brown's team since then has been to portray the sordid, if aborted, plot as aberrant freelancing by a rogue loner. It wasn't. Mr McBride's career, and the infantile antics that ended it, are hugely damaging precisely because they encapsulate some of the government's most corrosive flaws.
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