UK opposition demand Brown apology

Britain’s Conservative Party is demanding an apology from Prime Minister Gordon Brown over an e-mail slur campaign.

A scandal broke after it was revealed Brown’s top aide Damian McBride proposed that gossip about the Conservative leaders’ sex lives be posted on a new web site. McBride has been forced to resign after his e-mails to an associate found their way into the British press. Meanwhile, the Conservatives have been on the offensive and accused Brown of so called gutter politics – even though it seems he knew nothing of the campaign. The Conservative Party’s Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said:“There is clearly a cancer at the heart of Gordon Brown’s administration in Number 10 that is doing things that all reasonable people would say are totally unacceptable. It is disseminating lies about opposition politicians. Gordon Brown himself has to sort this out and apologise. He has to sort it all out so it can never happen again.” Labour MP Emily Thornberry said: “Well, it was not a campaign. What happened was that there were two men who were talking about the possibility of doing something. They decided against it; they did not do anymore about it. Someone then hacked into their e-mail account and then hawked it around the newspapers.” The Brown government is already mired in sleaze allegations over MPs’ expenses and this latest scandal will cause further damage to the British Prime Minister. It is a controversy which detracts from the image Brown seeks to present of a world statesman leading the response to the global financial crisis.