Tory standing for Jo Cox seat jokes to voters: We’ve not shot anybody
THE Conservative candidate hoping to win the former seat of murdered MP Jo Cox has apologised after she joked at a hustings: ‘We’ve not shot anybody.’
Offering her ‘wholehearted’ apologies, Dr Ann Myatt, who is standing in Batley and Spen, said her ‘ill-judged’ remarks had come ‘at the end of a tiring day’.
A video taken at the event showed Dr Myatt making the incendiary remark while discussing the coming together of various communities in the West Yorkshire constituency.
Praising the ‘first rate’ event for voters, she said: ‘We have here people of all faiths, we have here people from different parts of the community, and we have not yet shot anybody so that’s wonderful.’
The footage shows Labour candidate Tracy Brabin looking shocked at the inappropriate remark, which provoked gasps and groans from the audience. Dr Myatt then apologises. Mrs Cox, 41, was stabbed and shot several times as she attended a constituency surgery last June, a week before the EU referendum vote.
Her killer, neo-Nazi Thomas Mair, was jailed for life in November after being found guilty of murdering the mother of two.
Mrs Brabin was elected as the Batley and Spen MP last October after the other major parties opted not to stand in a by-election. The Labour candidate – a former Coronation Street actress – had worked with Mrs Cox on her campaign to save Batley’s library. She used her maiden speech in the Commons to echo Jo Cox, saying: ‘We have far more in common than that which divides us.’
Despite not running in October, the Tories had hoped they could win the seat next month. In 2015, they were just 6,000 votes behind Labour.
Dr Myatt, an NHS consultant dermatologist, unsuccessfully stood in Hemsworth in the 2010 election, and Westmorland and Lonsdale in 2015.
Yesterday she said: ‘I wholeheartedly apologise for my ill-judged remarks at the husting.
‘I said sorry at the time and would like to apologise again for my comments, which were out of character and came at the end of a tiring day.’
Labour’s national election coordinator Andrew Gwynne said: ‘These remarks are appalling. That they come from the Conservative candidate beggars belief.’ The Tory party did not respond to a request for comment.
‘I wholeheartedly apologise’