High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Damian McBride (born 1974) is a former civil servant and former special advisor to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. McBride began his civil service career at HM Customs and Excse. He worked with Customs and Excise and rose to prominence as Head of Communications at the UK Treasury until 2008. On 11 April 2009 he resigned his position after it emerged on a political blog that he and another prominent Labour Party supporter, blogger Derek Draper, had exchanged emails discussing the possibility of disseminating rumours McBride had fabricated about the private lives of some Conservative Party politicians. The emails from McBride had been sent from his No. 10 Downing Street e-mail account.