HERE COMES BRUCIEfficeffice" />

The resignation of ffice:smarttags" />Leeds city councillor Robert Finnigan after being caught downloading internet porn on council premises has created an opening for politically ambitious PR smoothie Stuart Bruce, who has been selected to fight Finnigan's safe Middleton seat in May.

Bruce, who is also in charge of Labour's media campaign in the north for this summer's Euro-elections, is so on-message he once initiated disciplinary proceedings against a Labour councillor who jokingly admitted to being an 'old Trot'. Clearly a Westminster career beckons.

Bruce's PR company Networx has spent much of the past year promoting the North and Yorkshire Business Forum, a typically Blairite project set up to give influential businessmen access to senior Labour politicians. Bruce set up the famous photo-opportunity in January 1998 when the then minister without portfolio Peter Mandelson took time out from addressing 160 businessmen in Selby to visit nearby Kellingley colliery, emerging blackened face to pledge the government's support for what remained of the coal industry.

This PR triumph by Bruce was slightly tarnished when press photographs of Mandy wearing a miner's helmet and luminous jerkin planted the first seeds of the king of spin being a Village People-style gay icon. The vest, as they say, is history.