Labour's Stoke candidate apologises to wife and daughter for describing women as 'polished turds'

Labour’s candidate in the Stoke-on-Trent Central by-election has been forced to apologise to his own wife, grandmother and daughter for a number of offensive tweets targeted at women.

In posts from a number of years ago, Gareth Snell called panellists on ITV’s Loose Women “squabbling sour-faced ladies”, and described Janet Street-Porter as a “polished turd”. 

He has since said he wouldn't want the women in his family to have to face the kind of disparaging remarks that he made himself on Twitter.

Following an appearance by Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary,  on the BBC, he tweeted: “Diane, you are great, then you say something incredibly arsingly stupid.”

He also called for a “speccy blonde girl” on BBC’s The Apprentice to “p**s off”.

During a radio hustings with other candidates in the Stoke-on-Trent Central by-election, he revealed he had apologised to his own family for the comments. 

He told BBC Radio 5 Live's Breakfast: "I’ll take the opportunity to apologise again for the things that I said previously. 

"I have apologised to my wife and my grandmother and my daughter because those aren’t words I would like them to have to face. So if I can take the opportunity to apologise, I will do."

Mr Snell also had apologies to make during the 90-minute debate, saying he was sorry for the "fruity" language he used in a tweet describing Brexit as "a massive pile of s**t".

Stoke-on-Trent by-election | Candidates

But Mr Snell said that he did not discuss with Jeremy Corbyn, during his three campaign visits to Stoke, his earlier criticism of the Labour leader as an "IRA-supporting friend of Hamas".

"We had a fractious summer in our party, we spent a lot of time arguing amongst ourselves, things got heated and things were said," Mr Snell said.

"The comments I made were to point out that we were getting to a point of hyperbole in our party that was damaging us publicly.

"But since then, I have met Jeremy, he has been to the constituency three times and he has been campaigning with us."