UK: Top Aide to Gordon Brown forced to quit over 'sex smear scandal'

The Observer ^ | Apr 11, 2009 | Gaby Hinsliff

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Gordon Brown is today engulfed in crisis after a key aide resigned and the Tories threatened legal action over explosive leaked emails discussing how to smear senior Conservatives, including David Cameron's wife, Samantha, with rumours about their private lives.

Damian McBride, one of the prime minister's closest advisers, quit over his exchange with the Labour blogger Derek Draper, in which the two discussed setting up a website to air scurrilous allegations about opponents, including unfounded allegations about affairs between leading opposition MPs. The idea was still being actively discussed until a fortnight ago, the Observer has learned. ..... Among the stories said to have been discussed are an allegation about the private life of Nadine Dorries, a Tory backbencher, which the Observer understands to be without foundation. Dorries has warned that she has already consulted a lawyer and was prepared to sue, ­adding: "I am completely incensed. I ­wonder how Gordon Brown would feel if a Conservative Central Office employee sent emails with slanderous 100% lies about Sarah Brown?" ..... When the existence of the emails emerged on Friday (Apr 10), Downing Street tried to play them down by dismissing them as "juvenile and inappropriate". ..... . . . Senior Tories are particularly furious that two of the proposed targets are understood to have been Samantha Cameron and Frances Osborne, wives of the leader and shadow chancellor respectively.

The emails are understood to discuss putting in the public domain a mixture of previously unpublished rumours and rehashed stories, such as allegations by a prostitute two years ago that she took drugs with George Osborne – which he angrily denied.

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Doesn't matter what side of the Atlantic, the left will use "any means mecessary" to achieve its goals, no matter who gets destroyed in the process.

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what is utterly amazing about this is that it got out.

[Vaduz]

Bet the D.C. hookers have many a good story to tell.

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Labour party activists set up the Red Rag blog as a ‘counter’ to what they regard as the overpowering Conservative presence on the Blogosphere.

And all they could think to put in it were lies and libelous falsehoods. The left cannot compete in the marketplace of ideas, so they filled up on malice and ad-hominem attacks.

The UK doesn’t have the same free speech laws as the US, but the corollary of that is that the bar for prosecuting libel is also lower.

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Any pics of the woman available?

[Chode]

sounds like democrats

[pepsi_junkie]

The emails are understood to discuss putting in the public domain a mixture of previously unpublished rumours and rehashed stories, such as allegations by a prostitute two years ago that she took drugs with George Osborne – which he angrily denied.

It worked! The rumors are in the papers!

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Conservative MP Nadine Dorries

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Samantha Cameron, wife of Conservative leader David Cameron

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She is pretty cute!