EMBATTLED former Scottish Secretary Alistair Carmichael has rejected calls for him to stand down as an MP as the SNP continued to pile on the pressure over the Scotland Office's use of a leaked memo to smear Nicola Sturgeon during the General Election campaign.

 

The Liberal Democrat MP told his local radio station on Orkney that he "very much regretted" the position he found himself in but, stressing how he had been the MP for Orkney and Shetland for the last 14 years, said: "I have worked hard for local people and believe that's the record on which I am entitled to rely and that's the job that I am now going to be getting on with."

Over the weekend, the Scottish Lib Dem Executive concluded Mr Carmichael would not face any disciplinary action. Willie Rennie, the party leader in Scotland, described his colleague's actions as an "aberration" and made clear the MP "deserved a second chance".

The row over Mr Carmichael's future erupted last week when a Whitehall inquiry found that it was the former Cabinet Minister himself who had approved the leaking to a newspaper of a memo, which related a private conversation between the First Minister and Sylvie Bermann, the French Ambassador to the UK.

The memo claimed Ms Sturgeon told M Bermann that she wanted David Cameron to continue as Prime Minister and Ed Miliband was not up to the job of leading Britain. The release of the contents, whose assertion was completely counter to what the SNP leader was saying in public, was meant to cause Ms Sturgeon maximum political damage just hours after she had given an impressive performance in the first of the election televised leaders' debate.

The FM swiftly and forcefully denied she had said the words attributed to her; so too did the French Embassy.

The official inquiry said the unnamed civil servant, who had made the note of the conversation, believed his account to be accurate but accepted that the key part "might well have been lost in translation".

In his radio interview,Mr Carmichael explained that he had "no reason to doubt" the veracity of the memo of the conversation.

He again made clear that the first time he saw it "in its detail, in its text" was when it was published in the Conservative-supporting Daily Telegraph.

Yet this fails to answer why he told Channel Four News, the day after publication of the memo's contents: "The first I became aware of this, and this is already on the public record, was when I received a phone call on Friday afternoon from a journalist making me aware of it."

But it was Mr Carmichael himself, who sanctioned his special adviser, Euan Roddin, to disclose the contents of the memo to the Daily Telegraph journalist.

Following protests in his constituency calling for the MP to step down, an online petition to the same effect had by yesterday evening already gathered nearly 9000 names.

Pete Wishart, the SNP's Shadow Leader of the House of Commons, claimed the ex-Minister was now "fixated with saving his own skin" rather than representing the needs of his constituents and called on him to resign.

"Mr Carmichael must now explain if he was sent a copy of the memo before authorising the leak. If he was, he must then explain why he apparently failed to read his own ministerial papers. A formal investigation by the Standards Commissioner would help shed light on these matters, which encompass the period before the House of Commons was dissolved."

Once Westminster resumes tomorrow, the SNP is intent on referring the matter to the parliamentary watchdog.

"Given that his majority plummeted from nearly 10,000 to just over 800, there is every possibility he would not have been re-elected if the truth had been known. The people in his constituency deserve an MP with their best interests at the forefront of his business and would, therefore, be best served by Mr Carmichael standing down," added Mr Wishart.