The revelations about Damien McBride's plans to prejudice voters against the Conservative party by fabricating salacious internet rumours about senior Tory figures has exposed a political PR web of intrigue.
The special advisor to Gordon Brown was forced to resign to save precious crumbs of credibility for his employers after extracts from an email detailing his lurid plans to slur the reputation of senior Tories were published in the national newspapers.
McBride, known as McPoison by his enemies, sent the email to Derek Draper, ex-Labour spin doctor and husband to GMTV's Kate Garraway.
Draper recently launched Red Rag, a left-wing blog set up to challenge the right-wing Guido Fawkes' blog of plots, rumours and conspiracy, which had been dominating the political blogosphere.
In his email McBride proposed a series of ideas for posts to the Red Rag blog, such as linking George Osborne with a prostitute and suggesting that David Cameron was suffering from an embarrassing illness.
But when the plan was exposed, the embarrassment was instead on the Labour party, leaving it fumbling to explain itself out of another political crisis.
And now the Tories want to turn the smears into an election issue, highlighting just how much politics is a battle of PR as it is a battle of policies.
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