A FORMER council leader has told the current Labour group leader to “man up” and apologise for “overstepping the mark” following his latest spat on Twitter.

Phil Turner, leader of the Conservative group at Basildon Council, has lodged a formal complaint to the council’s standards committee about Labour group leader, Gavin Callaghan.

It comes after comments made by Mr Callaghan on Twitter, were believed to be defamatory towards Mr Turner and another person.

Mr Turner believes Mr Callaghan is “in meltdown”.

He added that the complaint was lodged to encourage Mr Callaghan to do the decent thing, accept he’d overstepped the mark and apologise.

He said: “The guy is in meltdown, he overstepped the mark.

“I don’t want an apology for me, but he overstepped the mark with the other person.

“He knows he did, he needs to just admit he had a bad day and that he did not mean it in that way.

“This is not about politics, it is about being civil and to show you are a member of a civil society.

“It is time for Gavin to man up and make an unreserved apology to the person.”

Yet Mr Callaghan described the complaint as “deliberate political sabotage”. Referring to it, Mr Callaghan said: “This administration has got the most ambitious plans for Basildon and is halfway through a year of these plans. I have a bigger budget gap to fill than any leader in years and we are doing that.

“I was told by Phil Turner I was going to bankrupt the council, however, we have four different parties coming together to do good things.

“They’re trying to divert attentions of the people to whatever nonsense comes into Phil Turner’s head.”

Mr Callaghan had previously filed an official complaint against all 19 conservative councillors after a row broke out over a confidential document which was leaked to the Echo. The documents revealed that during a council meeting, which the public and press were excluded from, councillors decided against taking direct action against unauthorised development by travellers in Hovefields, Wickford.