By NICHOLAS CECIL

Last updated at 09:59 22 October 2007

Labour ran up a bill soaring towards £1million for the general election that Gordon Brown called off, it was reported today.

Party chiefs had given the go-ahead for hundreds of thousands of pounds to be spent on booking hoarding sites, hiring staff and printing letters, as well as other pamphlets.

With the Prime Minister's decision resting on the political situation in key marginals, Labour is also believed to have spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on detailed surveys by Mr Brown's favourite pollster Opinion Leader Research.

Around three million letters to be sent to key voters and Labour backers had already been printed, according to The Guardian, while technical experts working at the Tory annual rally in Blackpool were summoned by Labour, under a contract, to prepare a media centre in Victoria Street in central London.

Martin Linton, Labour MP for Battersea who has a majority of only 163, despatched thousands of letters to Labour supporters but most of them were caught up in the postal strike.

Furniture was ordered for the media complex and a lorry delivering it reportedly had to be turned away on Monday 8 October, just days after the election had been cancelled.

Labour also had to pay in advance for hundreds of poster sites, it was claimed, emphasising how close Mr Brown got to announcing an election.

The expenditure will be a further blow to Labour's finances as it seeks to pay off a deficit of around £20million.

The Conservatives are thought to have spent less than £200,000 as they geared up for a general election and are now using poster sites booked for a campaign for a referendum on the new EU treaty.

Mr Brown ruled out a referendum on the EU "son of constitution" treaty today on the grounds that it is different from the failed constitution. The Prime Minister faced a rebellion from Eurosceptic Labour MPs over his refusal as he reported back to the Commons from the Lisbon summit.

Conservatives, meanwhile, were hinting that they could pull out of the treaty if they win the next election - even if it has been formally adopted into UK law in the meantime.

This afternoon's statement by Mr Brown marks the start of months of parliamentary debate over the EU Reform Treaty which critics say is virtually identical to the rejected EU Constitution.

The Conservatives claim as many as 120 Labour backbenchers have signalled that they either privately oppose the treaty or simply want a referendum to be held on it.

But Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague conceded there was little chance of defeating the Government in a Commons vote because the Liberal Democrats are backing the treaty.





• Mr Brown is facing a fresh "bottling" debate with allegations that his right-hand man Ed Balls - now Children's Secretary - used the word when Mr Brown stepped back from launching a full-scale revolt among Labour MPs against Tony Blair after last year's local elections.

According to a new book, Blair Unbound, by the biographer and headmaster of Wellington College, Anthony Seldon, Mr Balls yelled: "You bottled it!"

Mr Balls, a former Treasury adviser and minister, strongly denied the charge and a spokesman said: "This is just invention and nonsense and littered with claims which are simply untrue."

In the book, Mr Blair reportedly complains of being treated "like an abused and bullied wife" after one row with Mr Balls about when he would leave No10.

The book claims that Mr Balls took an increasingly aggressive role in stoking up moves to oust Mr Blair. Mr Seldon wrote: "His increasingly assertive role at the Treasury struck some as echoing the 1963 film The Servant, in which the butler, played by Dirk Bogarde, progressively takes over as the dominant force from the owner of the house, James Fox."

Mr Blair is also said to have had concerns about Mr Brown's "character and personality, the dark side of his nature, his paranoia and his inability to collaborate".

The timing of the serialisation is likely to frustrate Mr Brown, who is trying to haul Labour out of an opinion poll trough following the debacle of the snap election that never was.