BRITISH PRIME minister Gordon Brown yesterday took the plunge and finally said sorry for the way his close former political aide Damian McBride had plotted to smear senior Conservatives about their personal lives.
Mr Brown’s apology and his personal expressions of regret in private letters to Conservatives underline how much Number 10 recognises the episode was damaging public perception of his character and modus operandi.
Mr Brown made his apology in Glasgow before a cabinet meeting at which he was facing warnings that Number 10 needed to restrict attacks on Tories to their policy failings.Making a clean breast about Mr McBride’s e-mails, he said: “I am sorry about what happened.”
He continued: “I have said all along that, when I saw this first, I was horrified, I was shocked, and I was very angry indeed. I think the most important thing we do is reassure people everything is being done to clean up politics in our country.
“I wrote to the people who were affected by it and expressed very deep regret for what happened.”
Mr Brown’s aides said yesterday had been the first media opportunity available to Mr Brown to say sorry, and that there was no material difference between saying sorry, as he had yesterday, and expressing regret, as he had in his private letter earlier this week.
The shadow chancellor, George Osborne, whose wife was one of the targets suggested by Mr McBride, said: “I welcome the apology and that Brown has taken responsibility for the culture inside Number 10. It has come a little late and it is a shame we had to ask for it.”
Charlie Whelan, a Brown adviser, political director of Unite, Labour’s biggest affiliated union, and a recipient of Mr McBride’s e-mails, struck a more combative tone. He wrote in his local paper that he was “not in any way defending the contents” of Mr McBride’s e-mails, but added: “Damian had never intended for his private e-mail to become public, and the gossip contained in them was well known to every Westminster hack.”
He rounded on the hypocrisy of the Tories and lobby reporters. He said the Tories’ director of communications was Andy Coulson, a former News of the World man forced to quit his job there “over the little matter of paying £100,000 for someone to tap the mobile phones of the royal family. So next time you hear a Tory spokesperson talk about Labour dirty tricks, just think about the sort of people they employ.” – (Guardian service)
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