The Labour Party will today begin its fightback in the Glasgow East by-election after a disastrous start to its campaign in which two prominent party figures refused to stand and a third withdrew at the last minute.

The opposition parties branded the opening stage of the campaign “Labour’s lost weekend” after the party was forced to cancel its start because it did not have a candidate to fight one of the safest Labour seats in Britain.

Labour’s campaign descended into farce after the party’s favoured candidate for the seat, George Ryan, a Glasgow city councillor, pulled out of the race on Friday night citing “family reasons”.

His withdrawal came just hours before he was due to be unveiled as the official Labour candidate – sparking a desperate last-minute plea by the leadership for other party figures to step forward.

Mr Brown’s hopes of holding the seat, which has a 13,507 majority, rest on Margaret Curran, an MSP who is expected to be selected tonight.

Opponents said she was a fourth choice candidate and derided her as a part-time MP because she would not stand down immediately from Holyrood if elected to Westminster.

Labour’s troubles deepened on Friday night after the candidate they wanted to contest the seat failed to turn up at the selection meeting.

It later emerged that Mr Ryan’s family had put pressure on him not to contest the by-election after allegations of housing benefit fraud reemerged on the eve of his selection.

Although the decade-old accusations were unfounded, Mr Ryan’s family told him that they were not prepared to endure weeks of hostile headlines and he got cold feet.

The Prime Minister’s office also failed to persuade Steven Purcell, the Glasgow City Council leader, or Lesley Quinn, the former general secretary of the Scottish Labour Party, to contest the seat.

David Cameron, the Conservative Party leader, will today make his first campaign visit to the constituency along with Iain Duncan Smith.

The Tories are expected to put Ms Curran under pressure over her refusal to stand down from the Scottish Parliament with immediate effect if she is elected. Mr Cameron said: “The voters will have a choice – a choice between rewarding a Labour Party rudderless in London, leaderless in Scotland and in disarray in Glasgow, or the Nationalists who view the vote as just another chance to further their agenda of breaking up Britain.”

Alex Salmond, the First Minister, will start his party’s campaign today with its candidate, John Mason, a Glasgow city councillor.

Angus Robertson, MP, the party’s leader in Westminster, claimed that the SNP had got off to a flying start: “Labour, by contrast, is in complete meltdown – both locally and nationally. This is their ‘lost weekend’.”

Speaking before the visit of Mr Cameron to Glasgow, David Cairns, the Labour MP, said: “The Tories devastated the East End in the 1980s and voted against measures to help people here, like the minimum wage, tax credits and pension credits.”

Labour claim that the Conservative candidate for the Glasgow East by-election, Davena Rankin, has forgotten which seat she is standing for.

The party pointed out that on her candidate’s website she is pictured with a member of the public holding a leaflet from a previous election where Ms Rankin was an unsuccessful candidate.

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