Prime Minister Gordon Brown has finally apologised for the e-mail smears that tar-geted top Tories and their families as he brought the UK Cabinet to Scotland for the first time in almost 90 years in a bid to boost confidence in his government.
The premier used the occasion in Glasgow to say “I’m sorry” and accept “full responsibility for what happened” when his adviser Damian McBride, who since resigned, suggested placing internet slurs to discredit senior opposition figures.
“I take full responsibility for what happened. That’s why the person who was responsible went immediately,” Mr Brown said on a visit to a Glasgow shipyard.
Meanwhile his business secretary, Peter Mandelson, talked up the economy saying there were still “plenty and plenty of opportunities” in the UK and urged people to stop being “so darned pessimistic” about the future.
His sentiments were reinforced by Mr Brown last night when he told a conference that the government would do all it can to help people into work, and insisted “next week’s Budget will be a Budget about jobs”.
Mr Brown and senior ministers spent the day visiting around Scotland, including Lord Mandelson test-driving an electric car at Knockhill racing circuit in Fife where he announced a subsidy plan for the vehicles.
Yesterday’s meeting, organised to discuss the economy, is the first time the UK Cabinet has met in Scotland since Prime Minister Lloyd George brought his ministers together in Inverness in 1921.
While ministers were discussing the UK economy in Glasgow, the SNP launched an attack on Westminster. And as battlelines were drawn between both governments over nuclear power, the Scottish Government accused Downing Street of frustrating Scotland's push for renewable energy by bullying the SNP into accepting new nuclear power stations.
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, who visited Hunterston nuclear station in Ayrshire, said the Scottish Government's opposition to new nuclear power stations in Scotland was wrong.
Later in the day Finance Secretary John Swinney made a plea for UK ministers to release a cash pot worth £150million to Scotland. Mr Swinney said the money – Scotland’s surplus under the Fossil Fuel Levy scheme – was currently lying “unused” in a London bank account.
It was also announced yesterday that Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon will today outline plans to give health boards £5.4million to recruit more than 600 cleaning staff to combat hospital-acquired infections.
Despite trying to focus on the country’s economy, the prime minister’s visit was dogged by the ongoing e-mail scandal. During a visit to Glasgow’s Govan shipyard, Mr Brown said: “I am sorry about what happened.”
Since the debacle first came to light, he has sent handwritten letters to the politicians smeared, expressing his regret for what happened and telling them that the rules for political special advisers would be toughened up.
Mr Brown, who had initially refused to apologise, finally bowed to pressure yesterday. He added: “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.” Mr McBride quit No 10 without severance pay when it emerged he sent e-mails making unfounded personal allegations about Conservatives, including leader David Cameron, shadow chancellor George Osborne, his wife, Frances, and backbench MP Nadine Dorries.
Mr Osborne dismissed the apology as “a little late” and said Mr McBride’s e-mails had gone beyond the “rough and tumble” of politics.
“Of course there is rough and tumble in politics and you get very used to it if you are in the front line. But this went way beyond that and was pretty personal.
“I was on an Easter break with my family and we were in my constituency and we have just moved on from it and got on with the things that families do,” he said.
Ms Dorries dismissed the apology as “spin”.
Meanwhile, Mr Brown’s former spin doctor Charlie Whelan has broken his silence over the e-mails row.
Mr Whelan, who was Mr Brown’s press secretary when he was chancellor and is now political director of union Unite, is understood to have been copied in on e-mails sent by Mr McBride to blogger Derek Draper.
In a weekly Highland newspaper in which he has an occasional column, Mr Whelan spoke of the “utter hypocrisy” of the Tories and their “spin machine”.
He wrote: “What was just as sickening about the e-mail scandal was the way the Westminster media attacked Damian McBride, despite the fact they had spent the previous 10 years relying on him for stories. 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.”
Mr Whelan said he had just settled down for a few days’ fishing and a couple of rounds of golf over Easter when the news broke.
He did not confirm if he was privy to the e-mails but said Mr McBride was forced to resign after “private e-mails were made public”. Mr Whelan used his column, Whelan’s World, to complain about his own private e-mail account being hacked.
He said: “What about the illegal hacking into computers that started it all off? Somehow I think the media who just love ‘leaked’ e-mails won’t be calling for a Scotland Yard investigation.
“I, however, am still considering if I should bring the police into the hacking of my own computer.”