Labour’s health spokesman, Andy Burnham, says the party does not owe the SNP leader, Nicola Sturgeon, an apology after criticising her on the basis of a widely contested allegation that she told the French ambassador she would rather see David Cameron as prime minister after the election.
Labour’s election strategy chief, Douglas Alexander, was revealed to have deleted tweets that highlighted the report, made in the Daily Telegraph. The allegations, apparently contained in a leaked Scottish Office memo, have been denied by Sturgeon and a spokesman for the French ambassador.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Burnham was asked if he thought the Labour party owed Sturgeon an apology. “No, I don’t think so,” he said. “There was a very clear report in the Daily Telegraph on Saturday morning based on a memo that they had seen, that had been given to them. Now, we can only respond to what people are reporting. This is an election campaign.”
Burnham said the newspaper might owe the SNP leader an apology, but he did not know if that was the case because he had not seen the memo. He said: “We responded in good faith. It falls to us, if there is a dispute about what’s said, that we don’t carry on assumptions about what was said.”
Alexander is one of Labour’s biggest hitters in the fight to avoid a heavy election defeat north of the border by the SNP. He had enthusiastically promoted the story after the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, described the “damning revelations” as evidence of SNP duplicity. Sturgeon said the story was “categorically, 100%, untrue”, but Labour’s campaign chief used his Twitter moniker, @Douglas4Paisley, to link to the story and tweet to his more than 39,000 followers: “Nicola Sturgeon secretly backs David Cameron.”
Another tweet read: “It turns out that @NicolaSturgeon told French Ambassador she’d prefer Tories...” And another read: “Reported tonight that @NicolaSturgeon told French Ambassador she’d prefer Tories remain in Government”. All three were deleted without explanation on Sunday night, according to the Tweets MPs Delete Twitter account.
DT @Douglas4Paisley: It turns out that @NicolaSturgeon told French Ambassador she'd prefer Tories... http://t.co/nIWEvd2cDY
— Tweets MPs Delete (@deletedbyMPs) April 5, 2015
Asked on Monday by the Guardian why he deleted the tweets, Alexander declined to comment, but said: “No one will ever know for certain what went on between Nicola Sturgeon and the French ambassador. But what we do know is that the Tories are desperate for the SNP to do well, and the SNP are telling voters across Britain to vote for anyone but Labour.”
Jim Murphy, leader of Scottish Labour, denied the party was embarrassed about heavily promoting the widely disputed story. “If Douglas has deleted his tweet, you will have to ask him,” he said, adding there had been no request sent out from Labour HQ asking for the tweets to be taken down.
On Saturday, a spokesman for the French ambassador said Sturgeon did not “touch on her personal political preferences with regards to the future prime minister’’ during a meeting in February.
In contrast with Alexander, who made no comment about the removal of the tweets, other Labour activists came clean. Duncan Hothersall, a leading Labour activist in Scotland, tweeted on Friday night: “So both @NicolaSturgeon & French ambassador have now both categorically denied Telegraph story. Apologies to the FM. Looks like I was duped.”
So both @NicolaSturgeon & French ambassador have now both categorically denied Telegraph story. Apologies to the FM. Looks like I was duped.
— Duncan Hothersall (@dhothersall) April 3, 2015
Several of Alexander’s Labour colleagues standing for re-election to parliament retweeted his original posts. They appeared to have been taken down automatically when Alexander deleted his post.
“I haven’t taken it down,” said Mike Gapes, who is standing for Labour in Ilford South. “There is, privately, an SNP agenda that wants Cameron to stay in office because it would speed up a second referendum on independence.”
Others whose tweets were deleted automatically were Emma Reynolds, the shadow housing minister who is running in Wolverhampton North East; Debbie Abrahams, candidate for Oldham East & Saddleworth; Iain McKenzie, standing for re-election in Inverclyde; Tom Greatrex, standing in Rutherglen & Hamilton West; and Gemma Doyle, standing for West Dunbartonshire.
