IF there is anything our politicians particularly excel at in these austere times, it’s insulting each other – and I daresay democracy is all the better for it.

With the public sector tightening its belt, the Coalition Government on seemingly shaky ground and the economy continuing to bumble along, these are tricky times for councillors and MPs up and down the land.

But The Source is becoming increasingly concerned with the behaviour of Worcestershire’s Labour group leader, who may have taken things too far by urging a fellow councillor to “commit suicide”.

Councillor Peter McDonald, as we all know, stood up and told Tory John Campion he ought to resign or kill himself during a debate over the bedroom tax.

A swift apology followed, which led to a further written one once a public complaint had been made over the jibe, but it still rankles with many fellow councillors that he said it at all – including members of his own group.

As one colleague put it: “I’m beginning to wonder about his stability.

“If he carries on like this we won’t put up with it for much longer.

“He puts down motions in council meetings all the time calling for other people to resign about this and that, then he goes and says that.

“We can’t have a leader of the group who can’t help himself.”

Word also reaches The Source that some members of his Labour group think Coun McDonald’s “appalling relations” with Councillor Adrian Hardman, the Tory leader at the authority, stopped the party getting better representation on the various committees and bodies which make many of the decisions at County Hall.

But it isn’t just within Worcestershire’s Labour group where Coun McDonald is skating on increasingly thin ice.

Last year he tried to compile a list of 20 key questions he wanted the Tory leadership to answer over George Lord, the disgraced former council leader doing jail time for indecent assaults on an underage girl and a sex attack on a 19-year-old member of staff.

Under his plan, the entire list would have been read out at a full council meeting in full glare of the public and press, causing the ruling party some embarrassment.

The questions went to Labour’s national HQ, which required legal advice on it, and it never saw the light of day – with sources suggesting the way in which he “continuously banged on” about the Lord saga was annoying those even within his own party.