Ed Balls ran No.10 dirty tricks unit - Sunday Times

With a homburg doff to the excellent Iain Dale, there is this quite explosive story in tomorrow's Sunday Times:

ED BALLS, the schools secretary, used Damian McBride, the disgraced spin doctor, to smear ministerial rivals and advance his own ambitions, a Downing Street whistleblower has claimed.In an explosive new twist to the e-mail affair, a No 10 insider has revealed that Balls was the mastermind behind a “dark arts” operation by McBride to undermine colleagues. He claims the education secretary is running a destabilising “shadow operation” inside Downing Street to clear his path for the party leadership if Labour loses the next election.

On the same subject, the News of the World claims there was a meeting between Mirror journalist Kevin Maguire and the Labour General Secretary about setting up the "Red Rag" website. Charlie Whelan and Derek Draper were also allegedly at the meeting, revealed via an email leak.