Adrian McMenamin

Adrian McMenamin is one of the key people at the political comms and campaigns consultancy Centreground Political Communications. He:

played senior roles in all three of Tony Blair's UK general election victories including running New Labour’s ground-breaking opposition research effort in 1997 and as Chief Press and Broadcasting Officer in 2005. He has been a consultant to numerous campaigns ranging from the SDLP 2003 assembly election campaign, as press secretary to the UK’s socialist delegation to the European Parliament, as an adviser to European accession referendum campaigns and as an adviser to the opposition in former-Soviet Georgia in the run-up to 2010 regional polls.

Background

In 2001 the Register reported:

Adrian McMenamin, a "special adviser" to Welsh secretary Paul Murphy. McMenamin - a protege of fallen Labour spin supremo Peter Mandelson - has been heavily implicated in ongoing investigations.

McMenamin also posted heavily to the same political newsgroups under his own name. His first posting came within days of David Currie's and since then he has written 358 messages on Deja newsgroups. Since November, McMenamin and "David Currie" have frequently supported one another's views. One posting, titled "English immigrants must be controlled - Plaid Cymru", was started by one Hairy Melon Jones and of the 51 responses, 22 were from David Currie and 2 from Adrian McMenamin - all critical of Plaid Cymru. Wales on Sunday is currently investigating whether Adrian has breached any political rules by posting his political views at all. The newsgroup itself bans party representatives from entering the discussion.

The whole issue raises the spectre of a co-ordinated propaganda campaign over the Internet by New Labour from Millbank as the election draws near. The position in Wales makes Labour particularly sensitive to Plaid Cymru. Of the 60 elected assembly members, 28 are Labour, 17 Plaid Cymru, 9 Conservative and 6 Liberal Democrat. Despite a coalition between Labour and the Lib Dems, the nationalist Plaid Cymru poses a significant threat to Labour's power in Wales.^[1]

Notes

• ^ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/01/30/new_labours_internet_dirty_tricks/