Ed Miliband KNEW about smear campaigns by Gordon Brown's spin doctor, Labour MPs admits as party in-fighting begins Damian McBride helped drive Gordon Brown's rivals out of Cabinet Spin doctor says he discredited opponents by tipping off newspapers Dame Tessa Jowell says she is 'sure' Mr Miliband knew about tactics Book also reveals Miliband briefed against Cabinet colleague Ed Balls Mr McBride forced to resign as Mr Brown's special adviser in 2009 Linked to a plot to smear Tory MPs via an anti-Conservative gossip website By Matt Chorley, Mailonline Political Editor and James Chapman Labour leader Ed Miliband found himself caught up in the explosive fall-out of memoirs of Gordon Brown's spin doctor Damien McBridge who ran smear campaigns from Downing Street. It emerged Mr Miliban's allies launched 'aggressive briefings' briefed his shadow chancellor Ed Balls during the dying days of the Brown government. And as Mr McBride's memoir revealed the toxic culture of spin, smears and feuding at the heart of New Labour, former Cabinet minister Dame Tessa Jowell said Mr Miliband knew it was happening at the time. In the background: Labour leader Ed Miliband knew about the ditry tricks and smear campaigns of his mentor Gordon Brown, it was claimed today Mr McBride confesses to helping Mr Brown drive his leading rivals out of the Cabinet by using the dark arts of media manipulation. In the disturbingly candid book, serialised in the Daily Mail, the spin doctor says he routinely discredited opponents by tipping off newspapers about "drug use, spousal abuse, alcoholism and extra-marital affairs." Coming from a figure so central to Mr Brown's political operation, the book risks causing serious damage to both Mr Miliband and Mr Balls, the former prime minister's two closest allies. Dame Tessa today admitted that Mr Miliband knew about the tactics used by Mr Brown's spin doctor to undermine rivals. Angry: Dame Tessa Jowell criticised the Damien McBride book, but said Mr Miliband was aware of the spin tactics 'I'm sure he knew that this was going on,' she said, before attacking Mr McBride for causing damage to the Labour party. She added: 'The strength of Ed Miliband has been to say that that is the past, we are not going back to that and that I am not going to preside over a parliamentary party or a Labour party that allows this kind of bad and malign behaviour and I think that has been a very important part of building confidence. She added: 'One of the most important things that Ed Miliband has done is to outlaw this kind of briefing in his shadow cabinet. I think that has built a sense of confidence and solidarity really in the parliamentary party that this kind of vile behaviour in the past just tore asunder. A clearly angry Dame Tessa, a key Blairite, said she was concerned that the 'awful, evil influence of people like Damian McBride" would overshadow Labour's achievements in government. 'I have to say someone like Damian McBride would be nobody were it not for the position he managed to get in the Labour party,' she added. The memoir will send shockwaves through the Labour party ahead of next week's annual conference. Fearing the damage it could cause to Mr Miliband's leadership, allies took to the airwaves to insist the revelations were historical. Hilary Benn, shadow communities secretary, told the BBC: 'This is the past, we've changed, we're a different party now, we're a different leadership, and I think this is a postscript on what happened before - it's not really relevant. But the memoir lifted the lid on the rivalry between Mr Miliband and his now-shadow chancellor Ed Balls. Spin: Gordon Brown attending the Labour Party Conference in Manchester in 2009 with Damian McBride (left) Labour's Douglas Alexander was today forced to insist he 'always supported' his sister Wendy. It came after claims from former spin doctor Damien McBride that he 'dispassionately' advised the then-prime minister Gordon Brown that Wendy would have to quit her role as the party's Scottish leader. Wendy Alexander stood down from the post in 2008 because of a row about donations to her leadership campaign. In his memoirs, Damian McBride claims that Ms Alexander's brother told Mr Brown that his sister would have to stand down to 'avoid further damage'. Mr McBride claims Mr Alexander warned his boss that his sister's resignation should not be linked to comments she made about the independence referendum. In his book, Mr McBride said Ms Alexander's call was 'entirely contradictory' to Mr Brown's comments on the timing of such a vote and that if she remained as Labour's Holyrood leader there was the risk of both this and the donations row 'rumbling on unresolved over the summer'. Mr Alexander, now Labour's shadow foreign secretary, discussed the matter with Mr Brown, said Mr McBride. 'Dispassionately he told the Prime Minister that his sister had to quit in order to avoid further damage,' Mr McBride claimed. If I was sometimes cold-blooded about how I did my job, I had nothing on Douglas that day. But Mr Alexander today said he 'always supported his sister' and 'never supported Damian McBride'. The Labour MP told BBC Radio Scotland's Good Morning Scotland programme: 'The style and approach of the politics that Damian McBride embodied has been completely discredited and thankfully the Labour party has moved on. I support Ed Miliband's efforts to remove that type of politics from our party.' Both men worked for Mr Brown in the Treasury, and splits emerged when Mr McBride was forced to resign as a special adviser in 2009 after he was linked to a plot to smear Tory MPs via an anti-Conservative gossip website. Mr McBride writes: 'The team around Gordon, which had always been remarkable for its unity, suddenly developed fissures. The fact that Ed Miliband zealots later used my sacking as an opportunity to give anonymous and aggressive briefings against Ed Balls - despite the damage that would do to Gordon as well - was a sign of how bad things got. Other key revelations in the McBride book include: Mr McBride helped destroy Home Secretary Charles Clarke by fabricating a briefing war between him and a key adviser to Tony Blair; Another obstacle to Mr Brown, John Reid, quit the same Cabinet post after Mr McBride leaked details of his alleged "drinking, fighting and carousing"; Allegations about another minister, Ivan Lewis, pestering a female aide were leaked to punish him for criticising Mr Brown's tax policies; Mr McBride confesses to logging in to Mr Brown's office email and leaking details of restricted or confidential documents to discredit opponents; Mr Brown developed an elaborate "political intelligence operation" with "moles" on the teams of rival ministers; Shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander knifed his own sister Wendy, the Scottish Labour leader, urging her dismissal over a minor donations controversy; As his premiership faltered, Mr Brown desperately tried to recruit celebrity advisers including Simon Cowell, Lorraine Kelly, Fiona Phillips and Lord Sugar. Mr McBride was forced to resign as Mr Brown's special adviser in 2009 after he was linked to a plot to smear Tory MPs via an anti-Conservative gossip website. The emails included fabricated slurs about the politicians" health and private lives. His book Power Trip, which will be published next week, tells the inside story of his own downfall, which plunged Mr Brown's Downing Street into scandal and chaos from which it never recovered. It gives the inside track of the years of bitter infighting between Mr Brown and Tony Blair, the spinning and plotting that ended the careers of senior ministers and the banking collapse that came close to plunging Britain into anarchy. Many of the key figures in his story are still leading lights in Westminster, which he brands "the binge drinking capital of Britain." Mr McBride confesses that he was "sucked in like a concubine at a Roman orgy" to the "dark" world of politics, which he says encourages "vanity, duplicity, greed, hypocrisy and cruelty." "Some people will undoubtedly wonder why - if Gordon knew I was guilty of misbehaviour - he never either formally reined me in or had me moved on," he writes. "And my answer to that is simply that there was something unspoken between us ... the unspoken word was from me to him, and said: "Don't question my methods."" He gives extraordinary accounts of his role in trashing both Mr Clarke and John, now Lord, Reid, as they emerged as rivals to Mr Brown in the bitter battle to succeed Mr Blair. In 2005, when Mr Clarke was Home Secretary and a threat to Mr Brown's succession, Mr McBride manufactured what looked like a briefing war between him and Mr Blair's anti-social behaviour "czar" Louise Casey. Newspapers were duped into thinking the pair were bitter rivals over home affairs policy - and the apparent feud contributed to Mr Blair sacking Mr Clarke in 2006. Mr McBride later told journalists Mr Blair had been in tears as he dismissed him. He also confesses to helping to destroy Lord Reid, who was the one remaining "obstacle" when Mr Brown finally had the chance to run for the leadership. Mr McBride says he started to leak from a "black book" of stories he had gathered about Lord Reid's alleged escapades in the 1980s and 1990s, when he and Mr Brown were both in the Commons. Mr McBride does not disclose details of the dangerous gossip he had assembled but one story published at the time included lurid allegations of "drink-fuelled indecent proposals" he allegedly made to one of Mr Brown's closest allies, Dawn Primarolo, now deputy Speaker of the Commons. Lord Reid was alleged to have asked Miss Primarolo to go to bed with him during a parliamentary trip to Berlin in the late 1980s and later told her at a bar in the Commons: "I want sex with you." Married Miss Primarolo was said to have been outraged and told him to stop pestering her. Circulation of the story was said to have been key to his decision to pull out of the Labour leadership contest and announce his resignation from the Cabinet. "No sooner had the first call been made following the first story I'd given out, than Reid announced he would be resigning," McBride says. A friend of Lord Reid later told Mr McBride he could "call off the dogs now." The book will hugely embarrass Ed Miliband and Ed Balls, the former prime minister's two closest allies The book goes on to reveal that while he remained publicly neutral in the Labour leadership contest that followed his defeat in the 2010 election, Mr Brown privately backed Ed Miliband. He was determined to prevent David Miliband, an arch-Blairite, winning the race and taking the party down routes he had resisted for a decade. Despite his closeness to Mr Balls, another candidate, he decided to back Ed - and intervened late in the contest when he feared David might win. Mr McBride says Mr Brown marked out Ed Miliband as "the one to watch" in 2007.