Come back McBride, Gordon Brown needs you

Bring back Damian McBride! At a rowdy meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) last night, Gordon Brown's inexperienced advisors were blamed for their boss's incompetent handling of the great allowances fiasco.

Labour grandee Sir Stuart Bell - one of the few Labour MPs to have been a 'name' at Lloyds - went on BBC Radio's Today programme this morning to describe the mood at the meeting as "sour".

The anger at the meeting, held behind closed doors in committee room 14, was directed at Brown's advisors for letting the PM make such an ass of himself.

The main bone of contention was that nobody in Downing Street had bothered to consult Labour backbenchers before Brown took the unprecedented step of making a video presentation, which turned up on YouTube, to announce his barmy master plan of a £140-a-day 'sign on' attendance fee to replace the controversial second home allowance.

Even Tony Lloyd, who chairs the PLP, had no idea what was going on before the meeting when rumours began circulating that Brown - from long distance in Pakistan - was organising a swift retreat having learned that no one, including his own side, was going to vote for the plan on Thursday.

Sir Stuart confirmed on Today that most of the fire was directed at the Prime Minister's officials, while Old Etonian leftie MP Mark Fisher complained that "young officials don't understand the relationship" between the PLP and Downing Street (ie - there isn't one).

Fisher said Brown was "very badly advised", adding: "He should look at the quality and experience of some of the advisers in Downing Street..."

Well, 34-year-old McBride - or McPoison, as we like to remember him - may have lacked judgment when it came to emails and smears, but he certainly had experience, having been a beefy presence at his master's side through most of his years at the Treasury before they moved together into Number 10.

It can only be a matter of time before someone starts whispering: "Bring back Damian".