Lord Mandelson defends Nick Clegg over ‘Tory smears’

Long shot: Nick Clegg campaigning in Bristol today as a bookie’s banner shows his odds on becoming PM
10 April 2012
WEST END FINAL

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Lord Mandelson made an extraordinary attempt to defend Nick Clegg against sleaze allegations today.

In a move that fuelled talk of a Lib-Lab deal, the Business Secretary said the claims were "smears" and "dirty tricks" planted by the Tories.

The Liberal Democrat leader faced allegations that money from three donors was paid into his personal bank account. Mr Clegg said he would publish figures to defend his position, and made light of quotes published from an article he wrote in 2002 in which he criticised Britain's "misplaced sense of superiority" for having defeated Hitler.

"I must be the first politician who has gone from being Churchill to being a Nazi in under a week," he said.

Lord Mandelson's intervention hours before tonight's second live TV debate made plain his hope that Mr Clegg will side with Labour in a hung parliament.

"This is borne of Tory panic, the Tories pushing the smear button in the hope that this will damage Clegg," he said. "The press stories we have seen today are straight out of the Tory Party dirty tricks manual."

Tory sources said Lord Mandelson was trying to smear them. There was no evidence that the Conservatives were behind the most serious claim, the disclosure that three Lib-Dem donors paid money into the private bank account of Mr Clegg.

Tonight's debate on foreign affairs was seen by many as a make-or-break event. Polls confirmed that a hung Parliament is on the way unless either Mr Clegg, Gordon Brown or David Cameron can pull clear in the final fortnight of campaigning.

Mr Clegg vowed to clear his name by publishing records of payments. He stressed that all the money was used to pay for a parliamentary researcher in his Westminster office.

"I received money from three friends which was properly given, properly received, properly declared, properly used to pay for part of the salary of a member of my staff," he said.

"Any suggestion I did anything wrong is out of order."

A Conservative source hit back at Lord Mandelson's dirty tricks claim: "This is a desperate smear by Peter Mandelson. He knows very well that we don't have the expenses files, The Telegraph do."

Senior Conservative MP Sir Malcolm Rifkind added: "It's silly, it's juvenile but it's vintage Mandelson and of course he has his own agenda. If Mandelson is your best friend you have got real serious problems."

Party officials were seeking to publish documents today to prove Mr Clegg used the money appropriately.

Records in the expenses files leaked last year to the Daily Telegraph show that Ian Wright, a senior executive at drink company Diageo, Neil Sherlock, the head of public affairs at accountants KPMG and Michael Young, a former gold mining executive, paid up to £250 a month into Mr Clegg's personal account.

The three are registered as Lib-Dem donors and their payments in 2006 were declared in the Commons Register of Members' Interests.

It is understood their donations went towards the salary of about £20,000 of a general parliamentary researcher in Mr Clegg's office.

Once Mr Clegg became party leader in December 2007, the payments were transferred to be paid into the account of the Lib-Dems' parliamentary office.

There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing by any of the three donors or that Mr Clegg broke any rules.

But Sir Alistair Graham, the former chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, said the arrangement appeared "irregular".

"Given that he's been very holier than thou about these things, it would seem he has some explaining to do to his party and the electorate," he added.

This morning several newspapers published negative stories about Mr Clegg on their front pages, and the Daily Mail highlighted quotes that Mr Clegg made in 2002 when he wrote: "All nations have a cross to bear, and none more so than Germany with its memories of Nazism. But the British cross is more insidious still.

"A misplaced sense of superiority, sustained by delusions of grandeur and a tenacious obsession with the last war, is much harder to shake off."

The Lib-Dems stressed the comments had been made in relation to an anti-German comment and Mr Clegg added: "I must be the first politician who has gone from being Churchill to being a Nazi in under a week.

However, Tory MP Nicholas Soames said: "These views will disgust people the length and breadth of the country."

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