HUNT ON FOR MATHEW STREET MOLE IN LIB DEMS

HUGE ructions within the Lib Dem group over who leaked Fireman Bradley's email.

Angry words around the Corridors of the Power(less) in the Municipal Buildings and in The Fireman's under-siege Leader's Office, which now apparently resembles Henshaw's bolt-hole before Sir Diddy was finally forced to walk the plank.

Bradley has been extremely active on the phone, calling up his 'colleagues', summoning others to meandering meetings and constantly pleading for party discipline (bit late in the day for that, eds)

But Wounded Badley still cannot put out the fire started by the Mathew Street fiasco.

Apparently The Fireman has ordered his own internal leak enquiry - threatening expulsion from the Lib Dem party, never mind the group, if the mole is ever unearthed.

(Shades of the ridiculous Tony Parrish probe, eds. Perhaps The Fireman can get the bald legal eagle, KenUnworthy to help him out?)

It is clear that Bradley's letter to Hilton, demanding the Harbarbarrowboy's resignation came from a mole inside the Lib Dem group.

They were the only ones who were sent a copy - in the post (silly boy. But it does show his weakness if he has to try and impress his own group with hysterical letters to the chief exec! eds)

Unfortunately we have only been able to narrow the likely leaker down to any one of about 24 Lib Dem's who had good reason to undermine the Fireman.

Apparently one enterprising Lib Dem has even opened a book on the identity of the leaker, with former Leader Mike Storey now 9-4 favourite.

But we can reveal that, in fact, there were two leakers who acted, apparently independently, within days of each other.

One copy of the email was delivered in a brown envelope to Labour Leader Joe Anderson's office in the Corridors of the Power(less).

The second was pushed, unaddressed, through Anderson's letter box at home!

Meanwhile Anderson is now understood to be in detailed negotiations with THREE separate Lib Dem councillors - including one Executive Member! - who want to cross the floor (or leave the sinking ship, eds).

Anderson's masterly leaking of Bradley's email to the Liverpool Echo also had its moments of quiet satisfaction.

After confronting Cover Up with Bradley's email, Anderson demanded an explanation from Hilton.

Word is that Cover Up was virtually speechless with shock and could only babble semi-incoherently as Anderson looked on in bafflement.

Anderson decided to put Hilton out of his misery and curtly dismissed the £225,000 a year chief executive. The lonely Hilton was left to trudge disconsolately back to Henshaw's old office "as white as the proverbial sheet", according to one observer.

One of the best conpiracy theories currently doing the rounds is that the leaker was not a Lib Dem at all, but in fact the smiling assassin, Hasitall, who saw his chance to get Bradley and Hilton out of the way, leaving him with a shoe-in for the job of chief exec.

It has a certain attractive authenticity, given Hasitall's record.