Labour has “sunk to a new low” by resorting to “dog whistle politics” usually associated with extreme fringe parties, a top Conservative claimed.
Lee Anderson said Sir Keir Starmer’s party is even “upsetting out of touch far-left agitators”.
Fury is mounting over the party’s doubling down on attack ads targeting Rishi Sunak over sentences for child molesters and rapists.
Even the Criminal Bar Association, whose members walked out in a row over legal aid funding, told the Daily Express Labour must stop using sentencing issues as a “political football”.
A hugely controversial advert published last week said: “Do you think adults convicted of sexually assaulting children should go to prison? Rishi Sunak doesn’t.”
Labour insiders revealed the party will double down on the attack ads, with one party source saying “nice doesn’t win elections.”
The source added: “They have got used to Labour shirking the dirty stuff. That’s changed.”
A second tweet published over the weekend suggested Mr Sunak did not believe adults convicted of possessing a firearm with intent to harm should go to prison as 937 adults convicted of the offence had been spared jail since 2010.
Mr Anderson said: “Sir Keir has finally realised that with an election due next year, he does not have a single policy to present to the British public so he is resorting to the sort of dog whistle politics usually associated with extreme fringe parties.”
“When you are upsetting out of touch far left agitators like Owen Jones and Kevin Maguire then you know Labour have sunk to a new low.”
Kirsty Brimelow KC chair of the Criminal Bar Association said: “Instead of using crime and sentencing as a political football for Government, Labour should focus on legal aid funding for barristers otherwise cases will continue being adjourned due to lack of barristers to provide representation.”
Labour is trying to position itself as the party of law and order ahead of the next election, targeting Rishi Sunak’s Government over policing and lax sentences of criminals.
The former Labour home secretary Lord Blunkett said he had been left “close to despair” by the “deeply offensive” adverts, which he said marked a descent into gutter politics.
One of the next attack ads will suggest the PM has “effectively decriminalised rape”, it was claimed yesterday.
A regional director of the Labour Party said in an email to the party’s parliamentary candidates: “This is about winning elections, winning elections so we can help people not just talk about it. Winning elections so we can lock up paedophiles and rapists, not look on in disgust.”
“We are going to be ruthless in showing how 13 years of Tory government has broken our systems and held everyone back. We’re going to be bold because that’s what it takes to win.”
“Keir and his team are determined to win the voters in the seats we need to gain. Your role as a candidate is to also build a relationship with those voters and win their trust. For too long we have told the electorate that we disagree with them. That will no longer happen.”
Another source said: “We aren’t talking to Twitter. We are talking to the vast majority of the country who want to see child rapists locked up and know the Tories have destroyed the criminal justice system. Sunak is leading the government that is responsible and he has got the man Jeremy Hunt who butchered the NHS as his chancellor.”
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