A BAD BUSINESS

by RAY FLEMING
THERE is no disguising the seriousness of the Damian McBride scandal for Gordon Brown and the Labour Party. I have written in Looking Around in today's Bulletin about some of the backgroud to this case and I have also said that, given the offensive content of McBride's e-mails, the prime minister should have quickly made a personal apology to Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne that a member of his staff should have been responsible. This would not only have drawn some of the poison from the scandal it would also have prevented Mr Cameron from adding - however illogically - this lack of apology to the PM's quite reasonable refusal to say sorry for the economic crisis. Now it is too late, even if Mr Brown were to change his mind, and the political climate in Britain will deteriorate accordingly. The political fall-out from the case will be considerable and may first be felt at the English local and European Parliament elections on 4 June. The results for Labour were never likely to be good and with sleaze and Downing Street dirty tricks added to its debit column they will probably be poor. It is the fate of local elections in Britain to be used as an opportunity for protesting at the national government of the day rather than for their proper purpose and on this occasion it is inevitable that the electorate will seize the opportunity to serve a final warning to Labour.