WATCH: Miriam Clegg says Labour knew about sexist Jared O'Mara comments before June election
3 min read
Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats knew about Jared O’Mara’s sexist and homophobic online comments ahead of the June general election, Nick Clegg's wife has claimed.
Miriam González Durántez said her husband had known about his Labour opponent's remarks but did not want to run a negative campaign in the Sheffield Hallam seat.
Her comments came as it emerged Labour will investigate how the MP was selected as a parliamentary candidate as part of its probe into his offensive online posts
Mr O’Mara quit the Women and Equalities Committee after some of the comments came to light on Monday and he was suspended from the Labour party on Wednesday.
In one he said singer Michelle McManus had only won Pop Idol “because she was fat”, and suggested it would be funny if the jazz star Jamie Cullum were “sodomised with his own piano”.
Accusations began to fly this week about who was to blame for his selection after it was revealed that he was not interviewed before being picked.
Labour has also tried to bat away reports that senior figures were handed a dossier back in September detailing some of what Mr O’Mara had said in the past.
But Ms Gonzales Durántez said Labour had “allowed a candidate to be presented as a progressive candidate when clearly he had deeply regressive views”.
“They knew before the election because my husband knew and even I knew,” she told ITV’s Peston on Sunday.
“The issue there is the hypocrisy of now claiming that no one knew about this. Even I knew, so of course Labour knew.”
She said Mr Clegg had “refused to run a campaign on those negative grounds”.
Meanwhile, Shadow Communities Secretary Andrew Gwynne today said the current probe into Mr O’Mara would extend to his candidacy selection process.
“As part of the investigation we need to look at how the procedures for selection and the choice of Mr O’Mara were adhered to by the party,” he told Sky News.
“That is part of the investigation because nobody holding those views in my view has a place in modern democracy.”
He suggested Jeremy Corbyn had not argued that Mr O’Mara should stay on the Women and Equalities Committee when the scandal first broke – contrary to previous reports.
Pressed further on why Labour waited three days to suspend him, Mr Gwynne said: “It’s all disgusting and I think we let the investigation take place and we let due process happen.”
PoliticsHome Newsletters
PoliticsHome provides the most comprehensive coverage of UK politics anywhere on the web, offering high quality original reporting and analysis: Subscribe
