What is there left to be said about the tawdry, squalid smear campaign hatched by Damien McBride and Derek Draper and their slanderous emails against leading Conservative politicians? It’s been splashed across the front of every paper today.

Is this the kind of “best practice” which led to McBride being ranked at No 2 in PR Week’s list of influential political PR leaders in its latest Power Book? It certainly doesn’t say much about their decision making, especially as last summer McBride was singled out for strong criticism in their magazine by Colin Byrne, a former Labour Party chief press officer and leading PR CEO.

He suggested that Tory comms chief Andy Coulson (No 1 on the list) was out-manoeuvring McBride and described his heavy tactics:

“McBride is just phoning up people and shouting at them. That’s all he does. It’s pathetic and they are losing friends left, right and centre in the media. They do need to get an Alastair Campbell or Andy Coulson-type figure in as at the moment there’s no-one who understands the media.”

A pity that didn’t start alarm bells ringing. That’s the background which set the scene to the build up of those desperate emails which backfired so spectacularly, thanks to Guido Fawkes.

I hope Nadine Dorries does sue and proves to these Labour  saddoes that she is not a pushover just because she is blonde, female and hugely amusing as a blogger.

While this has been hugely entertaining for us political geeks, I wonder how much of a turn-off it has been for the rest of the nation who regard it as another row between politicians who are “always at it”.

This Easter has been one helluva bruiser for Labour, showing itself up as the “nasty party”.  Dirty tactics never win. Just ask Hillary Clinton. Do you remember her smears against Obama and those leaked pictures of him wearing a turban? And Sarah Palin won no votes after accusing Obama of  being an unpatriotic man who would “pal around with terrorists”.

* Matthew d’Ancona sums it up brilliantly: “The age of McBride has passed. He was fit for purpose in an era when the media was configured in a certain way: the time of spin doctors, the carrot-and-stick to the media of access to ministers, the conflation of strategy and communications, the control of the ministerial court. All that will continue, of course, but it will no longer be enough. Blogger-pimpernels like Guido Fawkes will see to that. The web cannot be tamed. It cannot even be managed. It will subject this Government and its successors to scrutiny on a scale never seen before.”

*As a psychotherapist, it is totally indefensible of Draper to in any way support smearing the mental state of  George Osborne’s wife for political gain. How low is that?