THE former Downing Street spin doctor Alastair Campbell was yesterday accused by the Tories of orchestrating Labour’s election “dirty tricks” campaign.

Campbell, who featured prominently in the Iraq dossier row and resigned from the government 17 months ago, is now back playing a leading role at Labour’s London headquarters in the run-up to the expected May 5 general election.

Senior Tories, including the former prime minister John Major, suspect Campbell is behind Labour attempts to smear Michael Howard, the Tory leader, and use archived government documents released under new freedom of information laws to discredit the Conservatives in the campaign.

Major said yesterday such tactics would be “entirely consistent” with Campbell’s record as a spin doctor for Tony Blair. Major attacked what he called “underhand political chicanery” by Labour. “Over the past few years, since Labour began this tactic of spin, smear and sleaze allegations, it has got much worse,” Major said. “It is utterly what the present prime minister promised he would not do, and yet he and his party have ushered in the worst period of underhand political chicanery that I can remember at any time in my political life.”

Later a spokesman for Major said: “The government led us to believe that the culture of spin would end and people like Alastair Campbell, and the black arts they peddled, were out of the picture. How can it be true then that Alastair Campbell has returned to lead Labour’s election campaign? It is spin outspinning itself.”

The former prime minister was furious at reports on Friday suggesting that he and Lord Lamont of Lerwick, the former chancellor, were trying to block the release of Treasury papers leading to the so-called “Black” Wednesday in 1992.

Major vigorously denied the reports and is understood to believe that the false suggestion of a cover-up was an attempt to create publicity over one of the Tories’ worst moments of economic mismanagement.

Sir Andrew Turnbull, the cabinet secretary, who also once worked for Major and Lamont, yesterday made clear his anger at being dragged into the election dirty tricks row. He insisted that it was “entirely reasonable” to allow Major and Lamont time to study the papers before they were released.

This weekend senior Labour insiders disclosed that one of Campbell’s key roles in his new role of head of strategic election communications was to attack Howard’s record. Labour activists are being urged to request information from Whitehall departments that could be used to discredit the Tories in the election campaign.

Labour claims it is a perfectly legitimate exercise in political campaigning and that the party has put in only 20 requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) compared with the Tories, who have submitted 130 in their attempts to expose failings of Blair’s government.

The reports last week suggested that the Tories had spent £27 billion of reserves propping up sterling during the exchange-rate mechanism crisis.

However, the Treasury documents show that the loss to Britain incurred as a result of Black Wednesday was under £4 billion.

“This wasn’t a cut in the money we could spend on schools and hospitals, it was a reduction in the reserves which is what they are there for,” said one former Tory adviser. “It was a small amount to pay for getting inflation out of the system. People who are expecting fireworks from these documents will see that they are a bit of a damp squib.”

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