Labour was plunged into a fresh crisis as it emerged a candidate attacked Tory peer Michelle Mone by calling for people to “hit the c**t where it hurts”.
Ian Byrne, who is running in the safe-seat of Liverpool West Derby, shared a message on Facebook about Baroness Michelle Mone, the founder of underwear range Ultimo, as he accused her of betraying her working class roots.
A report for LBC uncovered a number of posts on Byrne’s account which have since been deleted.
Targeting housing minister Esther McVey, who was at risk of losing her seat, Byrne said she was a “ “b*****d… and soon to be gone”.
Byrne also attacked other public figures, including Prince William, who in 2014 he called a “horse faced t**t”.
He has issued a statement apologising for the comments but there were also questions for Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn who appeared to publicly endorse the candidate at a rally in Manchester.
Standing with Byrne in the background, Corbyn said he was “very proud” of party figures “some of whom are standing behind me”.
HuffPost UK has contacted Labour for comment.
It came as Labour’s candidate for Clacton, Gideon Bull, pulled out of the election race after it emerged he made an anti-Semitic remark.
Bull denied calling a Jewish councillor “Shylock” directly but admitted using the term during a private meeting.
The Haringey councillor said he did not realise the Shakespearean character was a Jew. A complaint was made to the party in July about the term being used.
Responding to the offensive post shared by Byrne, Baroness Mone has said: “I’m not going to comment on the specifics of Ian Byrne’s social media activity, but I will say politicians on all sides of the aisle need to raise the tone of debate; the recent increase in this sort of vitriol will only further divide us at a time when we desperately need to come together.”
Byrne, a Liverpool councillor, was selected for the safe seat by a narrow margin last week, with the vote having gone to a recount.
Byrne was only selected to run last month for the Labour safe-seat, in which former MP Stephen Twigg had a majority of almost 33,000 in the 2017 election.
He won the candidacy race by only two votes, having been endorsed by John McDonnell, Laura Pidcock and Liverpool Momentum.
Byrne had a history of offensive comments before his selection, however.
A report in the Mail on Sunday in September said Byrne had wrote “it can only be a matter of time before Boris Johnson’s mum comes forward and tells us that she was raped by Jimmy Saville in 1963.”
Byrne apologised to Johnson’s mother, the artist Charlotte Johnson Wahl.
The Liverpool councillor added that he was “mortified by these posts and deeply and sincerely sorry for the hurt and offence they cause”.
He was also forced to apologise for making a jokes about the Paralympic Games looking like “a night out in Salford” and for making a homophobic slur.
Those messages were made in 2012 and 2013, and Byrne told the Liverpool Echo the posts were made before he was politically active.
“Seven years ago I was working in a printing shop and at the start of my political journey,” he said.
A statement from Byrne today read: “I am deeply sorry for the inappropriate and offensive language from the shop floor that I used several years ago on social media and would not use today.
“I also shared a meme about a Conservative peer who voted to take away tax credits from the poorest and most vulnerable people. The person who originally posted the meme had used an unacceptable and misogynist language to describe her. This was not my language and I sincerely apologise.
“I’m a very different person now and I’m grateful that the labour and trade union movement has enabled me and so many other working class people to represent and fight for our communities. Through setting up Fans Supporting Foodbanks, I’ve been working to overcome divisions and bring our Liverpool community together and if I’m elected that’s what I will continue to do, transforming our communities in the interests of the many, not the elite few.”