Rayner apology for calling Tories ‘scum’
ANGELA Rayner last night finally said sorry for calling Tories scum.
The Labour deputy leader, who had previously resisted calls to apologise, said she would not use the same language again having ‘reflected’ in recent weeks.
She apologised ‘unreservedly’ hours after a man who said he blamed Miss Rayner in part for the killing of Tory MP Sir David Amess was sentenced for sending her a threatening email.
Miss Rayner has not been in Westminster for a fortnight following a bereavement.
In a lengthy post on Facebook last night, she said she used the time away to consider ‘our political debate and the threats and abuse that now seem to feature all too often’.
She added: ‘I have also reflected on what I said at Labour Party conference. I was angry about where our country is headed... but I would like to unreservedly apologise for the language I used.
‘I will continue to speak my mind. But in the future I will be more careful about how I do that and in the language that I choose.’
At the Labour conference in Brighton, Miss Rayner described the Tories as a ‘bunch of scum, homophobic, racist, misogynistic’.
Leader Sir Keir Starmer said he would not have used those words. But a day later Miss Rayner insisted she would say sorry only if PM Boris Johnson apologised for past comments ‘that are homophobic, that are racist, that are misogynistic’.
Yesterday, a former delivery driver who sent a threatening email to Miss Rayner in the wake of the killing of Sir David earlier this month was handed a suspended sentence.
A court heard Benjamin Iliffe, 36, felt she was ‘partially responsible’ for the attack.
The defendant, who appeared via videolink from Thorpe Wood police station in Peterborough, warned Miss Rayner to ‘watch your back and your kids’. He admitted sending a threatening email, and pleaded guilty to possessing cannabis on Wednesday when he was arrested.
Iliffe, of Chatteris in Cambridgeshire, was sentenced to 15 weeks in prison, suspended for 18 months, at Huntingdon magistrates’ court.