Email Scandal Ensnares Brown

L’affaire d’email deepens in Britain: Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who has expressed regret for scandalous anti-Tory emails sent by one of his senior advisers, met with Derek Draper—a left-wing blogger also implicated in the smear campaign—further infuriating the opposition party. Damian McBride, Brown’s close adviser, resigned Saturday after the leak of an email exchange in which he and Draper plotted to publish “scurrilous” stories about prominent Tories. The Daily Telegraph reports Brown and his wife had lunch with Draper two weeks after the creation of a Web site that was to publish the stories, and because of the close relationship between Brown and his adviser, some opposition politicians say the prime minister must have known about McBride’s extracurricular activities. “The emails raise serious concerns about the operation of No10,” Francis Maude, the shadow Cabinet Office minister said.