Labour candidate Stuart MacLennan sacked over Twitter rants

The general election campaign claimed its first scalp today when Labour sacked one of its candidates in Scotland who posted dozens of offensive comments on his Twitter page.

The spectacular "Twitter suicide" overshadowed Labour's formal campaign launch in Scotland and left Gordon Brown fuming.

Stuart MacLennan, 24, a rising star of the Scottish Labour Party who was standing in the Moray constituency, shut down his account on the microblogging site early this morning after The Scottish Sun reported that he had branded the elderly "coffin-dodgers".

He had also labelled the Commons Speaker John Bercow a "t**", David Cameron a "t***" and Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, "a b******".

Nor was his ire limited to the political world. The Sun reported that Mr MacLennan called the X Factor judge Louis Walsh a "c***", referred to Jedward as "odious little s***s" and wrote: "I f****** hate Paolo Nutini".

Mr MacLennan, who had been pictured campaigning with Mr Brown's wife, Sarah, apologised for his "very silly" behaviour and admitted he had let himself down.

"Some of the things I twittered before I became a candidate were very, very silly and I can see they are offensive," he said. "I have let myself and my friends down and am really sorry."

Although accepting that his remarks were "foolish", Scottish Labour officials initially stood by Mr MacLennan, who works for Labour at the Scottish Parliament and is Secretary of Scottish Young Labour. They pointed out that he was young and had now realised the error of his ways.

But the Tories and SNP scented blood and moved into attack mode, calling for Labour to sack their candidate for his unacceptable comments. It soon became clear that Mr MacLennan – whose Twitter followers were said to have included Ed Balls and John Prescott – had been liberal with the expletives since being named as a prospective parliamentary candidate.

The result was a particularly spectacular "Twitter suicide".

A Scottish Labour spokesman confirmed that Mr MacLennan had been dropped as the candidate for Moray for "the totally unacceptable language which he has expressed online".

He added: "Stuart MacLennan is no longer a Labour Party candidate nor eligible to hold office as a Labour Party representative."

Out on the campaign trail, Gordon Brown said: "A candidate has made a mistake. It’s unacceptable. That candidate has got to resign.

"I have made it absolutely clear what my views are: we cannot have people standing as candidates for the Labour Party who express these views, so that candidate will not be a candidate for the Labour."

The Tories and the SNP questioned why Jim Murphy, the Scottish Secretary, had not moved more quickly to remove the candidate after this morning's newspaper report.

Mr Murphy told the BBC News Channel: "Once we became aware of all the comment he has posted on Twitter, we were left with no option but to sack this individual.

"He was a young candidate, but that’s no excuse. He was keen to engage voters through Twitter but that’s no excuse for the rubbish and offensive and hurtful comments that he made.

"Once were we fully aware of that, we took the right action, which was to sack him as a candidate and to suspend him from membership of the Labour Party and not to allow him to hold office in the Labour Party."

Asked why he had not acted sooner, Mr Murphy said: "I am not a follower of this individual’s Twitter feed so I had no idea of these comments, and no one in the Labour Party did."

He added: "I would like to apologise to Labour voters in that constituency for the breach of trust that this one individual has carried out and the way in which he behaved."

Angus Robertson, the SNP's MP for Moray, said: "Only an hour before this announcement, Jim Murphy was saying he could stay as a candidate and trying to brush off these outrageous comments.

"However, he has been overruled and clearly has no authority. Did Gordon Brown tell his Scottish Secretary what to do?

"This incident has completely devastated Labour’s campaign launch today, but questions must be asked as many of these comments have been online for months, and presumably Labour colleagues have been well aware of them."