Business Minister Matthew Hancock has retweeted a poem suggesting the Labour Party “is full of queers”.
The Tory MP for West Suffolk retweeted the jibe, along with several other critical poems about Labour and its leader Ed Miliband, as part of National Poetry Day.
The line about the party being “full of queers” led to accusations of homophobia.
Labour MP Chris Bryant called for Mr Hancock to be sacked.
Amazed @matthancockmp sends vile tweet about “queers”. Cameron shd sack him now. pic.twitter.com/wHptYH3HPH
— Chris Bryant (@ChrisBryantMP) October 2, 2014
Politwoops, which tracks deleted tweets by politicians, captured the poem in full. It 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.
Mr Hancock has now apologised for the poem. He tweeted this afternoon that it was a “total accident”.
Previous RT was a total accident. I wholeheartedly disagree with offensive comment in the tweet & am incredibly sorry for any offence caused — Matt Hancock (@matthancockmp) October 2, 2014
The MP voted in favour of same-sex marriage last year.
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