Minister Matt Hancock says sorry for retweeting poem about Labour ‘queers’

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/oct/02/matt-hancock-says-sorry-retweet-labour-queers

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It might be national poetry day, and political sentiment is hotting up ahead of the election. But it still probably wasn’t very wise for the skills minister, Matt Hancock, to retweet a poem describing Labour as a party “quite full of queers”.

Hancock, the Tory MP for West Suffolk – and, for the past year, the junior minister for skills and further education – retweeted the five-line verse by an unidentified, and clearly far-from-talented, poet. The tweet was sent to Hancock from a Twitter user called In A Flap, a little-followed account calling itself “a discussion forum” for political debate.

Previous RT was a total accident. I wholeheartedly disagree with offensive comment in the tweet & am incredibly sorry for any offence caused

The minister soon realised his error and deleted the retweet, though not until it had been preserved for posterity by the Political Scrapbook website. The minister then tweeted: “Previous RT was a total accident. I wholeheartedly disagree with offensive comment in the tweet & am incredibly sorry for any offence caused.”

The original tweet also appeared to have been wiped by In A Flap.

The verse in full read: “the party run by young Ed / is quietly going quite dead/ bereft of ideas / quite full of queers / no wonder the faithful have fled”.

Amazed @matthancockmp sends vile tweet about "queers". Cameron shd sack him now. pic.twitter.com/wHptYH3HPH

Details of the deleted tweet show it was passed on to Hancock’s 17,300 followers using the Twitter application for iPhone, where accidental button presses are arguably more likely than on a computer screen.

Nonetheless, there were swift calls for actions against Hancock. The Labour MP Chris Bryant tweeted: “Amazed @matthancockmp sends vile tweet about “queers”. Cameron shd sack him now.”

Another Labour MP, Steve Reed, also called for Hancock to lose his job, the PoliticsHome website reported.