Sarah Brown steps in to bullying row to defend Gordon Brown

By James Kirkup, Political Correspondent Published: 6:30AM GMT twenty-three February 2010

Gordon and Sarah Brown Photo: GETTY

Speaking on GMTV, the Prime Minister"s mother combined her voice to John Prescott and Peter Mandelson in looking to etch Gordon Brown"s forceful celebrity as an item rather than a liability.

She said: "Gordon"s the man that I know and the man that I love. People have listened me speak about him and they probably know all that I would have to contend about him. I know him as a strong, tough operative decent man and he isn"t anything else. What you see is what you get with him."

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Lord Sugar additionally weighed in to the row as Downing Street launched a accordant renew opposite an anti-bullying arch who went open with claims that staff operative in and around the Prime Minister"s bureau had felt intimidated.

The neophyte star and The Government craving hold up described Mr Brown as a man with a "bit of fire" in his belly.

He praised Mr Brown"s stoicism in the face of the pressures of his pursuit and pronounced he was "absolutely not" a bully.

"When you cruise the pressures that the Prime Minister is under...it is extraordinary how he has managed to constrain himself on so most occasions," he told GMTV.

The row began with claims done in a book by the reputable domestic writer Andrew Rawnsley. It deepened over the week end when the head of an anti-bullying gift came brazen to explain that she had been contacted by "three or four" Downing Street staff.

Yesterday, Christine Pratt, head of the National Bullying Helpline, took her allegations further, observant she had perceived an email fixing Mr Brown personally.

"I have even perceived an email from someone who is alleging that they have [an] issue with Gordon Brown also, but we will be addressing that in confidence and alone and I will be patently referring that to Number 10," she said.

She after said: "I have perceived an email. I cannot plead the detail. It does name Gordon Brown but I"m not means to go in to that.

"It"s someone who has got an issue and I need to see in to that further."

Mrs Pratt pronounced that the email was from a Government worker who is formed not in No 10 Downing Street but elsewhere in Whitehall. She declined to give any some-more details.

A series of ministers have oral out to hole the claims. Mr Brown"s close Cabinet ally, Ed Balls, told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "I"ve well known Gordon Brown for twenty years and at no point has it ever occurred to me that Gordon Brown is or would ever be a bully.

"I know it is something that privately he feels really dissapoint about given he knows there is no law to these allegations. In fact, Andrew Rawnsley"s book - notwithstanding the account law - turns out on each one of these allegations to be incorrect.

"I don"t think it indemnification him. It hurts him personally.

The Conservatives have called on Sir Philip Mawer, the eccentric confidant on the ministerial formula of conduct, to investigate.

But Downing Street flatly deserted the call for an exploration and insisted there it had perceived no complaints about Mr Browns conduct.

Figures expelled in Parliament show that a series of cases of bullying and nuisance have been investigated inside of the Cabinet Office that includes Downing Street given 2006.

The Prime Ministers orator said: "Across the total of the Cabinet Office, that includes No 10, the series of complaints about bullying and nuisance is really low. However, I can encourage you that there have been no complaints about the Prime Minister."