Labour sleaze crisis intensifies

THE sleaze crisis enveloping Gordon Brown intensified last night amid damaging new revelations about his handling of the 'Smeargate' affair, alleged voting irregularities in a Labour candidate selection process, and the resignation from the party of a "sickened" former MP.

Scotland on Sunday understands that Foreign Secretary David Miliband and Justice Secretary Jack Straw both repeatedly warned the Prime Minister that the adviser responsible for last week's e-mail scandal was a troublemaker.

The fact that two of Brown's most senior Cabinet colleagues were concerned about the behaviour of Damian McBride long before he was forced to resign over the scurrilous e-mails raises yet more questions about the Prime Minister's judgment.

Labour was plunged into yet more controversy over the selection process for the safe Westminster seat of Erith and Thamesmead, London, when it emerged a ballot box had apparently been tampered with. And a former MP revealed she was quitting Labour in protest against an organisation she no longer recognised.

The problems for Labour were reflected in two polls last night. One of which showed that the Tories had extended their lead to 17 points. The other revealed that more than one-third of voters trust the Government less in the wake of the e-mail smears' affair.

Privately, Straw and Miliband suggested that Brown should ditch his adviser, who finally quit eight days ago after it emerged that he had sent scurrilous e-mails from a No 10 account containing smears about senior Tories' private lives.

Miliband was said to have been particularly vocal about McBride, having been the subject of his aggressive briefings last summer when there was widespread speculation that the Foreign Secretary was mounting a leadership challenge to Brown.

Both Secretaries of State expressed their views before and after McBride's move last October, when he stopped being a spokesman with day-to-day dealings with the press to take charge of strategic planning at Downing Street.

"They'd both told Brown time and again that he should get rid of him. This guy has been around for years and almost everyone else seemed to realise that he was bad news," a senior Labour source said.

Brown attempted to draw a line under the scandal last Thursday when he finally apologised about the e-mails, five days after they were published.

But the row over the tactics used by Brown's Downing Street office is expected to escalate tomorrow when his disgusted MPs raise the matter at a parliamentary party meeting.

Last night, Jimmy Hood, the veteran Labour MP for Clydesdale, said he would raise McBride's behaviour at the PLP's meeting. "To me this has just been appalling. It is where politics should not go and it is disgraceful that it has been done in Labour's name. It is the stuff of the gutter."

Stephen Ladyman, the MP for Thanet South and a former transport minister, said: "I would be surprised if something wasn't said about it because a lot of us feel we've been let down quite badly. Most of us have a great deal of respect for our opponents."

The anger has filtered through the party with one of Labour's longest serving members, Alice Mahon, a former MP for Halifax for 18 years, resigning from the party yesterday because she was "sickened" by McBride's e-mails.

Brian Wilson, a former Labour energy minister, condemned the tactic of sending innuendo through cyberspace in the hope that it would help Labour at the next election.

Writing in Scotland on Sunday today, Wilson said misguided advisers thought it was in the interests of the Government to control a website "through which would be disseminated a weird assortment of falsehoods, rumours and innuendoes about Tory politicians and their loved ones. It is a mindset which reflects paranoia of Nixonian proportions."

Labour was facing yet more sleaze allegations when the party called off a selection hustings yesterday after it was discovered that a ballot box had been tampered with.

Labour is to investigate claims of voting irregularities in a controversial candidate selection process. One of those standing is Georgia Gould, 22, the daughter of one of the architects of New Labour, Philip Gould. She is standing against seven other women shortlisted to represent the party in Erith and Thamesmead in south-east London.

Meanwhile, Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, last night denied reports that he masterminded McBride's spin operation to undermine colleagues in order to advance his own career and claim the Labour leadership after the next General Election.

A spokesman for Balls said the allegations were "completely fabricated and malevolent nonsense without any foundation in fact".