TORY district councillors have been left with egg on their faces this week after accidentally sending emails branding fellow councillors buffoons and deserving of contempt to the people they were attacking.

The comments, published on the Conservative party net, were intended to be

private but one of the councillors involved pressed

the wrong button and copied in every member of West Wiltshire District Council.

In one of the emails, to Cllr Brian Mudge, Westbury member Russell Hawker said: "Labour members deserve to be treated with the contempt they deserve."

Cllr Hawker then goes on to attack the Liberal Democrat party, saying: "Have a look at a photo of the previous Lib Dem cabinet and see what a bunch of buffoons they looked like."

Cllr Hawker this week told the Wiltshire Times he regretted any offence caused to fellow council members.

He said: "Those were private dialogues between individual councillors. They were not intended for circulation to non-Tory members and they were certainly not intended to be public comments."

The row comes on top of

a failed bid to oust Conservative chairman Marion Clegg by Labour

and Independent members, which led to the resignation from the cabinet of Cllr

Eli Manasseh (Lab) and

Cllr Christopher Newbury (Ind).

Council leader Tony Phillips (Ind) has since offered Labour a seat on the Cabinet, a move attacked by the Tories.

An email from Cllr Mudge said: "The cabinet should be served by the best members available and who are needed to run the council's affairs.

"I see neither in offering this sop to the Labour group who have shown on more than one occasion that their support cannot be counted on."

The council is currently a hung council with 19 Conservative seats and 18 Liberal Democrat, so the support of the five Labour and Independent councillors can swing the balance.

Labour member Vic Oakman, dismissed by Cllr Mudge in an email as 'ill equipped' for a seat on

the cabinet, this week said there was now no chance of Labour taking the seat offered to them.

He said: "I am disgusted by the whole lot of them. I wouldn't sit on a cabinet with that lot if they were the last people on earth.

"They will struggle with decision making but they have made a rod for their own backs."

Liberal Democrat councillor Duncan Hames told the Wiltshire Times he was shocked at the content of the emails.

He said: "The tone of the emails varied amongst the different councillors but at times it verged on the childish.

"I think it is important for all of us councillors to conduct ourselves in a fashion which the public would expect from us and not allow the tone to be lowered in this way."