Savaged by shock jock, Smith also faces the sack

If anyone in Gordon Brown's Cabinet is having a worse week than the boss himself - disgruntled backbenchers are plotting to remove him as Labour leader, according to an exclusive report posted today by The First Post’s Westminster Mole - it is his embattled Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith. She faces a lawsuit from a man who claims she's a "lunatic", she faces the sack from her current job, and she's the subject of yet another allegation of questionable behaviour regarding her infamous "second home".

Working backwards, the Daily Mail reveals today that the house in Redditch that she vows is her second home for the purpose of Commons allowances is actually her primary residence. The evidence? A Freedom of Information request to Redditch Council shows that Smith pays council tax on the property as if it were her main home. In other words, she does not receive the 25 per cent discount she would be entitled to if the house really was the full-time home of only one adult - her husband Richard Timney.

Of course, Smith has a habit of being forgetful when it comes to allowance claims – which is why she never noticed that her husband had accidentally claimed for watching 'adult' movies on the satellite TV bill picked up by the taxpayer. So it is quite likely she will eventually respond that she simply forgot to ask for the 25 per cent discount.

As for the possible sacking, according to The Mole she is almost bound to lose the Home Office in a reshuffle after the June 4 European and local elections, when Labour can expect to be trounced at the polls. The thinking is that she will move to Health and the more popular Alan Johnson will get the Home Office.

The lawsuit is threatened by the ultra-right-wing American "shock jock" Michael Savage whose name appeared this week on a list of people banned from Britain by the Home Office.

Savage was included on the "unwanted list" for "engaging in unacceptable behaviour" as a result of his views, which include branding the Koran as "a book of hate". But he has taken great exception to being included on the same list as Muslim extremists and known murderers.

"For this lunatic Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary of England, to link me up with skinheads who are killing people in Russia, to put me in (the same) league with mass murderers who kill Jews on buses, is defamation,” he told his radio listeners. "Moreover I have been endangered by this lunatic. She has painted a target on my back, linking me with people who are in prison for killing people.

"As a result of this I'm going to sue her… I don't know if I can win, I don't know the law of England. I have seven lawyers working on this right now."

Media lawyer Mark Stephens has told the Daily Telegraph that Savage could be in line to receive as much as £200,000 in damages. "He would seem to have a very good case," he said. "The people on the list who have been banned are supposed to be advocating extreme violence and so to put him into that category is clearly defamatory.

"His views, such as those on homosexuals, may be offensive but that is another thing entirely. The Home Secretary appears not to have appreciated the difference between tolerance and defamation."