A LABOUR hopeful has defended a fellow candidate who said she would celebrate Tony Blair’s death – by comparing it to people celebrating Hitler’s death in a car crash interview today.
Jane Aitchison, who is standing in Pudsey in Yorkshire where the Tories have a slim majority, made the remarks as she defended fellow election nominee Zarah Sultana.
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Earlier this week Ms Sultana was forced to apologise for saying she would celebrate the deaths of the Labour Leader who won three General Elections, Binyamin Netanyahu and George W Bush.
Ms Sultana, 26, who will fight Coventry South, tweeted in 2015 about the idea that people should not celebrate others’ deaths.
In a message reported by The Jewish Chronicle she wrote: “Try and stop me when the likes of Blair, Netanyahu and Bush die”.
In a extraordinary BBC 5 Live interview this afternoon, Ms Aitchison defended Ms Sultana for her sickening remarks.
She said: “Sometimes say things [when they] are very passionate and they say things that are wrong.”
Referring to Jacob Rees Mogg’s shocking comments the Grenfell fire victims lacked common sense, she added: “I don’t think that what she’s saying is necessarily worse than looking down on the people of Grenfell who died in a fire.”
To that, interviewer Emma Barnett replied: “So we’re in a situation of top trumps. What’s worse, talking about in a tower who should have got out versus celebrating the deaths of two former Prime Minister and a current Prime Minister?”
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Ms Aitchison said: “Well it’s not good is it? What I’m saying is we’ve got people saying these things, should they all be banned from standing?”
When pressed on whether Ms Sultana should be allowed to stand, she paused for an excruciating 12 seconds.
She then said: “I think I’d like to talk to her and see what she was really trying to say.
“If she’s apologising then I think that would be OK.
“People do celebrate deaths sometimes. It’s not good is it? Is it really good to celebrate deaths? It’s not, but people do sometimes because they feel strongly about whatever that person represented.
“For instance, people celebrated the death of Hitler.”
Ms Aitchison, a former member of the Trotskyist Socialist Party of England and Wales, has come under fire for her own comments made on Twitter.
It was found the Momentum-backed candidate had described Waitrose customers as “scum”, Prince Charles as “benefit scrounging scum” and McDonald’s as offering “sh*t food and sh*t jobs”.
In August 2012 Ms Aitchison attacked Prince Harry after photos of him emerged in Las Vegas.
She said: “Time to strip Harry of his royal title. Why stop at him? Royal b******”.
Tory Stuart Andrew won Pudsey by just 331 votes at the 2017 election and the constituency is a top Labour target.
RACIAL SLURS
Ms Sultana, whose selection campaign was backed by the activist group Momentum and the trade union Unite, has also been criticised for other comments she’s made.
She said Israel was “created through ethnic cleansing, sustained through occupation, apartheid and war crimes”.
She said the messages had been posted when she was a student “exasperated by endless cycles of global suffering, violence and needless killing resulting from decisions by political leaders, from the Iraq war to the killing of over 2,000 Palestinians in 2014, mostly civilians, which was condemned by the United Nations”.
She added: “I do not support violence and I should not have articulated my anger in the manner I did, for which I apologise.”
Ms Sultana was also accused of using racial slurs while a student at Birmingham University.
In one Facebook post about a Jewish student, Miss Sultana wrote: “I can’t believe this YT (slang for ‘whitey’) thinks she can represent us.”
In 2015, Miss Sultana, who sat on the national executives of both Young Labour and the National Union of Students, posted on Twitter: “Yay, the white woman didn’t win the Ethnic Minorities Officer Election!”
She also referred to the police as “thugs” in a tweet from 2015.
The Labour Party has refused to comment.
