Online smears aimed at top Tory hopeful
9:35am Friday 3rd July 2009 in News
THE woman hoping to become Bolton West MP at the next General Election has been compared to Hitler in an online attack by her own colleagues.
Susan Williams, the Conservative candidate for the constituency currently held by Labour’s Ruth Kelly, was leader of Trafford Council when two members of her own party posted the comments, under pseudonyms, on a newspaper website last January. An investigation was then launched.
One comment said: “Even Hitler didn’t make the same mess in six years that she’s made since she took over.”
Another, posted by a different councillor, accused Mrs Williams of running a ‘shambolic council’ and called her incompetent.
A Trafford Council investigation found that the comments had been posted from a council computer and that on each occasion only the councillors in question had been logged onto the system.
It concluded that it was “extremely unlikely” that anyone other than the two men had been responsible. Both have since stepped down as councillors.
Mrs Williams, who is still a councillor but stepped down as leader in May, said she did not want to comment.
The mother-of-three was the first female Conservative leader of Trafford Council in 2002 and became its youngest leader, aged 36, when she led the Tories to power in 2004.
