Douglas Alexander, the minister criticised over the Scottish election fiasco, last night demanded an apology from those politicians who had "impugned his integrity".
After the publication of a critical report into the voting shambles earlier this week the former Scotland Secretary, who is now at the International Development Department and Gordon Brown's General Election co-ordinator, was accused by MPs of "having his finger in the till" and of "attempted gerrymandering".
But yesterday Ron Gould, the Canadian election expert who wrote the report, said in a letter to the Electorial Commission that he had never suggested specific actions were taken by ministers to advance their own party's interests.
In the light of Mr Gould's comments Mr Alexander now wants an apology from politicians including Tory leader David Cameron, shadow Scotland Secretary David Mundell, First Minister Alex Salmond and Scottish LibDem MP Alistair Carmichael.
A spokesman for Mr Alexander said: "To impugn his integrity was always wrong, and now Ron Gould has confirmed as much."
Mr Mundell, responding to the Gould letter, said: "The blame has already been accepted by Douglas Alexander."
In his letter, Mr Gould said all political parties were to blame for May's election problems. The letter, he explained, was intended to "clarify" his report's findings after argument among political parties over who was the main target of his criticism.
In his clarification he set out how he reached his findings.
"I did not suggest in the report specific actions were taken by ministers to advance their own party's interests but that all political parties were concerned with the potential political advantage that could be gained by certain decisions, such as on the question of ballot paper design, and this delayed key decisions."
He concluded that "while responsibility for taking these decisions lay with the Scotland Office and the Scottish Executive, all political parties were involved in the long-running debates, contributed to the final decisions and shared in the failure to prioritise the interests of the voter."
Meanwhile, a senior Labour figure acknowledged "administrative" responsibility for the Holyrood elections could be transferred to Scotland. Former minister Andy Kerr said he would be relaxed about the move.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article