When not administering the last rites to HS2, Ed Balls has spent conference week forsaking his old mucker Damian McBride.
The former Number 10 spin doctor has just written a book about the dark arts of media manipulation during those New Labour years that we all miss so much.
Apparently, some of Gordon Brown’s lieutenants were in the habit of leaking damaging information about rivals to the press. And on some occasions, this info fell a wee bit short of being entirely truthful.
After I heard this, I had to pick myself up from the canvas for a mandatory 10-count while Mr Feather waited in a neutral corner.
Mr Balls was similarly shocked at the revelations of skulduggery.
"What Damian McBride did was wrong and, to be honest, unconscionable,” the shadow chancellor said this week. “I have never seen people behave in this way – personal, nasty, smeary, made-up stories. I think it is hideous and people are shocked by it.”
We all use language differently, so I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why Mr Balls went for “people are shocked by it” rather than the more obvious “I’m shocked by it”.
The shadow chancellor is not the only one reaching for the smelling salts this week. Our old friend Alistair Campbell is also outraged at Mr McBride’s revelations.
While I wouldn’t necessarily defend the actions of Mr Brown’s attack dog, it is worth pointing out that – in most cases – no civilians were harmed in his maulings.
Like an old-fashioned Mafioso, Mr McBride only attacked people in the same line of work as himself.
Some Westminster insiders may have been upset when smear stories about them ended up in the papers, but I for one will manage to get to sleep tonight.
In short, no real people were hurt.
Which is not true – to put it mildly – about the policy with which Mr Campbell and his old boss are most closely associated.
