A 'Hungover' Tycoon, a Crumpled Shirt and the Disturbing Truth About a No10 Smear Campaign ; Former Tory Treasurer Lord Ashcroft Tells the Remarkable Story of How Labour Used the Media to Try to Destroy Him

Mail on Sunday › September 25, 2005

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Summary

TONY BLAIR was last night accused of being responsible for a vicious campaign which used leaked Government documents, private detectives and smears in an attempt to destroy a senior Tory politician.

Sensational allegations that Downing Street collaborated with the Labour-supporting Times newspaper in an all-out war on former Conservative treasurer Michael Ashcroft are made in a new book by the multimillionaire peer. It states: . The Government systematically leaked secret Foreign Office memos to try to stop him being given a peerage, and was forced to pay Pounds 1million in legal costs after admitting it.

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A 'Hungover' Tycoon, a Crumpled Shirt and the Disturbing Truth About a No10 Smear Campaign ; Former Tory Treasurer Lord Ashcroft Tells the Remarkable Story of How Labour Used the Media to Try to Destroy Him

. Former Overseas Aid Minister Clare Short stopped Pounds 10million of aid to the former British colony of Belize in central America because Ashcroft was based there.

. The Times drafted a 'scandalous' Commons speech by a Labour MP, which accused Ashcroft of being linked to a drugs and money- laundering investigation in America.

. The paper hired private detectives and paid an American official who was later jailed for hacking into US Government computer records to 'dig for dirt' on Ashcroft.

. One of the journalists involved in the investigation into his alleged links with dru...

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