Tory grandee Michael Ashcroft has written an accusatory book against
The Times and the Labour Government, which he believes ran a damaging
campaign against him in 1999 to get him removed as Conservative
treasurer.
Dirty Politics, Dirty Times – my fight with Wapping
and New Labour, out next month, outlines his fight against both the
newspaper and the Government to rebut what he says was their “sinister
and undemocratic purpose”.
Ashcroft is particularly scornful of
The Times’ then editor, Peter Stothard, and the alleged links between
its then deputy political editor Tom Baldwin and Labour spinmeister
Alastair Campbell and Andrew Hood, a special adviser to the Foreign
Office.
The paper, he claims, ran a “get Ashcroft” campaign about the amount of cash he was donating to the Tories.
It also ran articles implying he was involved in corruption and drugrunning in Belize, where he was a former UN ambassador.
Dirty Politics, Dirty Times is published on 10 October by MAA Publishing at £20
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