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Reports say Daily Mail paid in excess of £130,000 for former Gordon Brown spin doctor Damien McBride's book serialistion

By Angela Haggerty, Reporter

September 22, 2013 | 2 min read

The Daily Mail came out on top of a bidding war for the serialisation of Gordon Brown’s former spin doctor Damian McBride’s memoir after offering at least £130,000, according to reports.

Spin doctor: McBride was known as "McNasty" and "McPoison"

According to the Guardian, the closest bid to the Daily Mail came from its sister paper, the Mail on Sunday, at just under £100,000, while the Sun and Telegraph are thought to have tabled bids in the region of £50,000. The Guardian offered less than £10,000.

The book, Power Trip: A Decade of Policy, Plots and Spin, details the smear campaign tactics employed by McBride and his relationship with the media. Managing director of publisher Biteback, Iain Dale, said the book was a political sensation equal to that of Lord Peter Mandelson’s memoirs.

Chris Boffey, former news editor of the Observer, Sunday Telegraph and the Mirror and onetime special adviser to the Labour government, said McBride was known to political journalists as "McNasty" or "McPoison" and said the book had come at the "worst possible time" for the Labour party.

Meanwhile, current Labour leader Ed Miliband – who apparently receives little mention in relation to McBride’s underhand tactics in the book – said on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show on Sunday morning that he’d tried to convince former prime minister Gordon Brown to sack McBride over his behaviour and said his tactics were “not my kind of politics”.

The book is due to be released on Wednesday 25 September.

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