The British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's special advisor Damian McBride has resigned following a controversy over emails discussing smear stories about Tory MPs, Downing Street said this evening.
Downing Street was forced to apologise for the emails which it described as "juvenile and inappropriate". A spokesman said that "the Prime Minister, nor anybody else in Downing St, had knowledge of these emails.
The mails were sent by Mr McBride from a No 10 email account to Derek Draper, who runs a Labour-supporting website.
However, they were leaked to blogger Paul Staines, aka Guido Fawkes who published details of them earlier this week.
"It is the Prime Minister's view that there is no place in politics for the dissemination or publication of material of this kind, which is why it is right that Mr McBride and Mr Draper took the decision not to publish this material and regrettable that others are choosing to do so."
In his resignation statment Mr McBride said he was "shocked and appalled" the emails had been put in the public domain.
"I have already apologised for the inappropriate and juvenile content of my emails, and the offence they have caused, but I did not want these stories in the public domain — it is because Paul Staines has put them there, and I am sickened that he has done so," Mr McBride said.