The row over smears at Westminster spread to Scotland yesterday when a political blogger accused Labour of starting a Red Rag-style website to attack the SNP.

The website, A Leaky Chanter, was set up at the same time as Damian McBride, the Prime Minister’s former adviser, was discussing publishing false stories about senior Tories as part of Labour’s internet strategy.

Most of the stories that the Leaky Chanter site carries ridicule the First Minister, but several cast doubt on his conduct and probity. One article is headlined “The £14,000 bill for Alex Salmond’s phantom home”.

Scottish Labour denied that it was behind the site but Iain Dale, a Conservative blogger, said that there were similarities between the website and Mr McBride’s planned Reg Rag site.

Writing on his blog, Iain Dale’s Diary, he said: “Readers in Scotland and Wales may be having a wry smile at the fact that the grubby Red Flag blog didn’t quite make it to the internet in time. For in those two countries, Labour has indeed started up versions of the Red Rag. In Wales we have the Aneurin Glyndwr blog (started last month) and in Scotland A Leaky Chanter (started in December 2008).

“They are not as salacious as the Red Rag was intended to be, but they clearly exist as attack blogs, purely designed to attack the motives of the other parties.”

A Leaky Chanter is run anonymously and hosted on an American site called Blogspot, which allows people to create their own blog. The respected Labour blogger Tom Harris MP has a link to A Leaky Chanter on his site.

The SNP said that A Leaky Chanter contained untrue claims about Mr Salmond and ran a fake Twitter site in his name. The “phantom home” article, which is linked to a Daily Record story published more than a year ago, was scurrilous and designed to smear the First Minister, a source close to Mr Salmond said. That story centres on a £14,000 expenses claim that Mr Salmond made for the rent of a flat in London. The website said that he hardly used the flat.

Another headline claims “Free phones for SNP advisers”. The SNP said that the figures related to Blackberries for ministers’ private office staff, not special advisers.

Angus MacNeil, the SNP’s Scotland Office spokesman, said: “With a senior blogger linking Leaky Chanter to Scottish Labour, and Welsh Labour finding themselves red-faced over the Aneurin Glyndwr blog, Labour must reveal who is running Leaky Chanter and what its relationship is to Labour’s blogging operations.

“There is a place for humour but we have Labour-linked blogs in Scotland branding neutral civil servants as SNP staff, making inaccurate allegations claiming ‘phantom houses’ and running fake sites as the First Minister — this is a dangerous path for any organisation to take.”

The SNP’s call came as Harriet Harman, Labour’s Deputy Leader, promised that the party would stick to clean politics. Addressing the STUC conference in Perth, she acknowledged public concern over the smears that Mr McBride had planned to run. “We will stick fast to our principles and values. No one in Government wants to see us involved in personal attacks — either on each other or on the Tories or the SNP.”

Mr McBride resigned after e-mails he wrote discussing smearing senior Tories were exposed.

A spokesman for Scottish Labour said: “This SNP smear is a shameless and feeble attempt to invent a Scottish dimension to a story. The only website funded, operated or endorsed by the Scottish Labour Party is www.scottishlabour.org.uk and to imply otherwise is utterly misleading.”

The spokesman added that there were at least 12 anonymous pro-Nationalist and anti-Labour websites operating. “Angus MacNeil and the SNP need to take a long hard look at the actions of people associated with their own party . . . before making baseless allegations against others.”

A Conservative spokesman said: “The Labour Party must ensure that the politics of sleaze play no part in Scottish politics, and make an unequivocal statement on all they know about these sites and whether its authors have any connection to the Labour Party.”

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