WORCESTER’S would-be Labour MP has been ditched as the city’s parliamentary candidate after she appeared to cast doubt on the death of party MP Jo Cox and questioned the lack of images of the damage caused in the Manchester terror attack.
Mandy Richards was chosen by the city’s Labour members on April 14 to fight the next General Election in a bid to overturn Robin Walker’s 2,490 majority for the Conservatives at last May’s snap poll.
Worcester’s Labour Party met last night to discuss the row and the party’s National Executive Committee has failed to endorse Ms Richards as a candidate meaning she will no longer fight the seat for the party.
Its understood party figures nationally are furious with Ms Richards for not disclosing aspects of her past which provoked such lurid revelations in the national press at the weekend and criticised her for a lack of judgement.
The selection of a parliamentary candidate for Worcester will be now be re-run.
The Observer understands local party members were unaware of the legal cases or the tweets when they chose Ms Richards as their candidate and a party source said: “We can only make a decision based on the information that’s presented to us.
“As a constituency party we are very clear about this.”
A number of party members are understood to be furious at the row with some calling for the selection processes to be reviewed and Worcester’s former Labour MP Mike Foster, who held the seat from 1997 until 2010, calling for Ms Richards to be sacked.
“She cannot be the Labour candidate for the next election. We cannot gift the Tories the seat like this,” he tweeted.
Revelations in the national press at the weekend alleged Ms Richards has been banned from bringing court actions without the permission of a judge after she claimed MI5, MI6, the Metropolitan Police, the Army, Thames Water, the Royal Mail, Hackney Council, her GP and others were harassing her.
Labour’s current Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott was called to give evidence in court but branded Ms Richards an ‘obsessive’, according to the court papers following the verdict.
Ms Abbott also said Ms Richards bid to challenge the result of a 2016 London Assembly election, where she alleged there was a conspiracy to cheat her involving the returning officer, ‘simply cannot be true’.
Following the publication, tweets from Ms Richards emerged including one where she tweeted a video which appears to suggest footage of the Westminster terror attack had been doctored.
Ms Richards issued a statement on Facebook, which she later removed, which said: “In response to articles and comments posted over the weekend I would like to initially state if being a victim of domestic harassment and standing up for my rights makes me a fantasist then shame on those levelling such taunts.
“It is clear they would rather have women and black people suffer in silence than seek advocacy and resolution.
“Between 2015 and 2017 there were a number of unexplained incidents in and around my home including home invasion, theft, a car break-in, computer hacking, bike tampering, mail tampering, a fridge fire and electrical surges rendering my computers and mobile phones unusable.”
