Grenfell Tower fire: Tory politician defends motivations behind 'offensive' Hitler tweet

A Conservative politician who ran to be the MP for Coventry South has sought to defend the reasoning behind her controversial post about Adolf Hitler in the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster.

Michelle Lowe, who lost to Labour in the recent election by a decisive margin, shared a photo of the Nazi leader smiling and hugging members of the public on Twitter on Monday evening. She sarcastically wrote: “Politicians should go out and show emotion”.

The senior councillor was immediately accused of comparing Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to Hitler, with people on Twitter branding the tweet “insensitive” and distasteful.

In the immediate wake of the deadly inferno which ravaged Grenfell Tower, Mr Corbyn was applauded for engaging with local residents and overtly displaying emotion after he was pictured hugging and comforting them. On the contrary, Theresa May was accused of lacking empathy and wholly misreading the public mood after she refused to meet any survivors of the disaster during a visit to the scene.

But Ms Lowe told The Independent the tweet had not been related to Mr Corbyn’s reaction to the west London blaze and insisted it was merely a response to the criticism levied at the Prime Minister for failing to display emotion after the disaster.

Seeking to defend her motivations behind the tweet, the Tory politician said the image “spoke to me at the time” and seemed like a good way to express her anger at the treatment of Ms May.

She said: “If people show emotions in public, it doesn’t mean they do care or they don’t care. Some people are reserved and some people are not and we shouldn’t judge people about how much they care by what they show in public.”

“My post intended to show this [Hitler] is a bad man that is able to show comfort to people but it doesn’t mean he cares about them. I was trying to find an example of someone who is clearly not a good person. He was a bad evil man but he was able to relate to people. He must’ve been able to do so to get into the position he was in.”

She said the tweet had been “taken out of context”, saying it was a “very simple thought process” which had been wholly misunderstood by critics.

“But I’ve learnt not be so trigger happy with social media and think more deeply how things interpreted before I press enter.”

When pressed about what she would say to those who argued the post was offensive and it was rarely appropriate to bring Hitler into such matters, she continued: “At the time I was trying to make a simple point of an evil man compared with a Prime Minister who was accused of not showing emotion in public. Being reserved doesn’t make you a good or bad person.”

Ms Lowe has apologised to the BBC, saying she was “sorry for any upset that may have been caused”.

The failed MP was condemned for the tweet by Gary Ridley, the Tory leader in Coventry, who said he was “disturbed” by her statement and she did not represent the views of Coventry Conservatives.

He said: “I'm disturbed by any attempt to use Adolf Hitler to make a political point.”

“He brought pain and suffering to the world on an unimaginable scale and was responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent people.

”To evoke his memory in this way is disrespectful to those who suffered at the hands of this monster and trivialises the crimes of the Nazi regime."

She has also sparked fury with members of public, with critics dubbing the tweet "vile" and "insensitive".

Stuart Jennings said: “For someone in a representative position, this is an awful tweet to make.”

Ms Lowe’s tweet comes just after a Conservative politician was suspended after appearing to suggest there should have been a “hanging” during protests over the Grenfell Tower catastrophe which is thought to have claimed at least 79 lives.

Ken Hawkins, a cabinet member at Solihull Council, sent the offensive, inflammatory tweet after hundreds of protesters stormed Kensington Town Hall on Friday to voice their anger about the devastating inferno.

Replying to an image of protesters gathered outside the town hall chanting for justice, Mr Hawkins, who now apologised “unreservedly”, said: “Lets get ourselves a hangin!”