Dirty Dr John Reid

[ian1964 10,720]

John Reid's surprise decision last week to scrap his plans to challenge Gordon Brown prompted a welter of speculation in Westminster.

 

Just days before, as bruiser Mr Reid was positioning himself to take on the Chancellor, his enemies in the Labour Party were queueing up to reveal why they considered him a liability.

 

Their accounts centred on drink-fuelled indecent proposals he allegedly made to one of Mr Brown's closest allies, Treasury Minister Dawn Primarolo.

 

And the claims are thought to have been one of the reasons Mr Reid pulled out of the Labour leadership contest and announced he is to resign as Home Secretary when Tony Blair steps down next month.

 

Mr Reid is said to have asked Ms Primarolo to go to bed with him during a Parliamentary trip to Berlin when he phoned her at a hotel bar from his room.

 

And later at a bar in the Commons he is alleged to have told her: "I want sex with you" and "You want it too."

 

Both times, an outraged Ms Primarolo, who is married to union official Ian Ducat, told Mr Reid to stop pestering her.

 

Mr Reid declined to comment yesterday and a spokesman for Ms Primarolo said: "She is recovering from major surgery and is not in a position to comment on this or any other issue."

 

The first of Mr Reid's obscene proposals - both of which are thought to have been made when he had been drinking - happened during an All-Party Defence Study Group visit to Germany shortly after the Berlin Wall came down in 1989.

 

At the time Mr Reid was married to his childhood sweetheart Cathie, who died in 1998. Ms Primarolo was 35 and had been in the Commons for only 18 months.

 

A Labour source said: "We had all been out to dinner at an Army officers' mess. We were in the bar. The phone was near and the barman said 'It's for Ms Primarolo.'

 

"It was John. He invited her up to his room. She said: 'Why on earth would I want to go to your room?'

 

"He said, 'I think you are grown-up enough to know what for. I'm waiting for you, the door is open.'

 

"She said 'I am absolutely disgusted' and banged down the phone.

 

"She thought it was Ian - whom she married shortly after the Berlin trip ringing her. She blew him off the phone and said 'How dare you speak to me like that.'"

 

Ms Primarolo told friends it was not the first time Mr Reid had "pestered" her.

 

But she refused to complain to Party chiefs, insisting she could "handle" him and had told him to leave her alone.

 

The second incident, shortly before the death of then Labour leader John Smith in 1994, when Mr Reid was Shadow Defence Secretary, was witnessed by several people.

 

One said: "John came lurching up and said to Dawn 'I want to have sex with you, I want to f*** you, you want it as well."

 

Ms Primarolo's friend and neighbouring Bristol Labour MP Jean Corston intervened and, according to a source, told Mr Reid:

 

"You are a disgusting creature. Get away from her," adding: "That's it, I'm going to report him."

 

Ms Corston, who is now a Baroness, told colleagues she raised the matter with John Smith, commenting: "It won't be happening again."

 

One Labour insider said: "Dawn was on the verge of tears. She said Reid had been harassing her over a period of years and had propositioned her in the bar. It was very painful for her."

 

When Mr Reid was summoned by the Labour leader, he gave Mr Smith a sealed envelope containing his resignation and told him that if he misbehaved again, Mr Smith should open it.

 

Mr Reid was true to his word, gave up alcohol overnight and rose fast through the Labour ranks.

 

He has since spoken of his battle with the bottle, saying: "I didn't have a problem with alcohol, I loved it. I decided the best thing I could do was not to drink.

 

"The best way for me to make sure that circumstances would never arise is just to stop something completely. I'm a hundred per cent guy."

 

The Labour-supporting Guardian newspaper said last year that in his younger days Mr Reid was a 'huge womaniser' who regularly went 'partying with a succession of girls until 4am, returning to his wife at dawn."

 

It added: "Drunk one day in the Commons he tried to force his way on to the floor to vote. When an attendant stepped forward to stop him, he threw a punch."

 

Mr Reid married his second wife, Brazilian film-maker Carine Adler in 2002, three years after introducing himself at a party with the words: "I've been admiring your a***."

 

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-454473/The-day-leadership-rival-John-Reid-propositioned-young-Brown-ally-Dawn-Primarolo--drank-again.html#ixzz1KIF8EPBD