The Conservative Party’s 2010 candidate for the parliamentary seat of Batley and Spen – the seat of murdered MP Jo Cox – has lashed out at Baroness Sayeeda Warsi after her claim to have defected from the ‘Leave’ to the ‘Remain’ campaign.
Janice Atkinson (nee Small) has told Breitbart London that Baroness Warsi never helped her campaign during the 2010 general election, and was certainly never any part of the Brexit campaign.
Ms. Atkinson said: “In 2010 I stood for the Conservative party in the key marginal seat of Batley and Spen. As the [Conservative Party] chairman, Ms Warsi was expected to tour the marginal seats, campaign with us, support us, help us to raise money and even talk to ordinary people in the street. She did none of these things, even though she lived in the next door constituency of Dewsbury.
“In fact, Ms Warsi met me for a coffee – once, for half an hour – and brought along her 10-year-old daughter. She promised much and never delivered.”
Baroness Warsi has been roundly mocked for her claim to have “defected” between the two camps today, with many taking to Twitter to lampoon her for appearing at different points in fiction and in history. The Leave.EU campaign released the following graphic to continue the jest:
'@SayeedaWarsi, former beating heart of the Leave campaign.
We're sure she was there in spirit, at least. #EURef pic.twitter.com/EtmzSoasqe
— Leave.EU (@LeaveEUOfficial) June 20, 2016
And Ms. Atkinson added: “Warsi promised to help me in the Asian areas of Batley because Labour had worked the seat hard. Back then it had a 15 per cent Muslim demographic that the Tories had not worked, preferring instead, to work the outlying areas. Most of the women did not speak English… I met many women who had arrived 40-50 years ago who had learned English because they had to. Once multiculturalism and mass immigration had taken hold, their daughters admitted to me that they didn’t need to speak the language any longer. This is Warsi’s Britain.
“I lost the election because of the Lib Dem bounce (8,925 votes from nowhere and the vile British National Party got 3,685 votes, because the Tories refused to discuss immigration, despite the Asian population wanting to).
“Tory HQ acknowledged that my campaign was one of the energetic best, Ukip stood down against me and, if Warsi had helped me in Batley, we may have won or even gone to the wire. MP Mike Wood, won with a much reduced majority of 4,406.”
Ms. Atkinson performed better than her 2015 counterpart for the Tories in 2015, who lost by over 6000 votes. Ms. Atkinson only lost by 4400.
“As for [Warsi’s] Euroscepticism,” added Ms. Atkinson – who is now an independent Member of the European Parliament, “this is a lie”.
“Everyone knew my views on the EU. I was even called into Tory HQ a couple of times and told to stop banging on about Europe. When I mentioned that the EU was an issue to the voters of Batley and Spen she dismissed it, telling me that the EU was not an issue, and that I was not to discuss it.
“Today she said she would never get on a night bus with the Leave campaign. I’d find it difficult to imagine her on a bus, she drives a Jaguar.”
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