Tuesday 31 January 2017

Labour's "local man" in Stoke Central is "still a Suffolk-boy at heart"

Labour's "local" candidate in the Stoke Central by-election is actually from Stowmarket in Suffolk - about 4 or 5 times the distance from Stoke as UKIP leader Paul Nuttall who Labour are trying to discredit as an outsider.

Guido has been digging around the internet and found a tweet from 6 years ago in which Labour's "local man" Gareth Snell describes himself as "still a Suffolk-boy at heart". There's also a letter in the Stoke Sentinal a year later hypothesising that Snell was double jobbing in Tristram Hunt's office in Stoke whilst leading Newcastle Borough Council (as he was at the time) because he was after what would have been a safe Labour seat there at the time.

Gareth Snell is neither local, nor does he "understand Stoke-on-Trent". He is a committed Remainer who has described Brexit as a "massive pile of sh*t" and supports EU membership for Turkey. The Stoke Central constituency voted to Leave the EU by a whopping 69.4%, making it one of the most eurosceptic places in the country.