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Biteback has acquired a political memoir from former spin doctor Damian McBride, who found himself at the centre of a scandal during Gordon Brown’s time in Downing Street.
The publisher acquired world rights for the book, Power Trip: A Decade of Policy, Plots and Spin, with a five-figure advance.
McBride worked at the Treasury and Number 10 from 1999 to 2009, as a civil servant and a spin doctor, before emails he had made discussing false rumours about opposition MPs were made public, and he resigned. The book will describe his career and what it was like inside the New Labour government.
Iain Dale, Biteback m.d. said: “I have absolute confidence in predicting Damian’s book will be seen as the political memoir of the year. I’ve been chasing this book for at least eighteen months and am delighted to have persuaded Damian to put pen to paper. It confirms Biteback as the ‘go-to’ publisher for political books.
"Everyone knows from his blog that Damian is a brilliantly incisive writer and that he was in a unique position to expose what being at the centre of power in the Brown government was really like."
McBride said: “Given that Iain Dale was one of my supposed enemies when I was working in Downing Street, he was the last person I expected to be working with, but his thoughts on what this book should be about exactly matched my own, and I am delighted to be publishing it with him.”
The book will be published on 23rd September in hardback, priced at £20.
Royalties from sales of the book will be split between McBride’s current employer CAFOD (the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development) and his former employers, Finchley Catholic High School.