Jack Buckby from the far-right Liberty GB party has announced he’ll run for the seat of murdered Labour MP Jo Cox. All other British parties says they will not contest the by-election, in honor of the Labour MP’s tragic demise.
Cox died on Thursday after being shot and stabbed while attending a constituency surgery she was holding in the West Yorkshire town of Birstall.
Thomas Mair, 52, is in police custody, accused of her murder.
Before Buckby's decision to run, Labour would have won an automatic victory.
Buckby’s bid was described as “obscene, outrageous and contemptible” by Shadow Home Office Minister Jack Dromey.
“The immorality of the far right knows no bounds,” the Mirror quoted Dromey as saying.
“Britain will be shocked and they will be roundly rejected in the by-election.”
Buckby, who was previously a member of the British National Party as well as a potential “heir” to former leader Nick Griffin, said he wants to contest the seat because the Labour Party “has blood on its hands.”
“By shutting down debate and labelling working class people concerned about their communities as racists, they [the Labour Party] risk driving desperate, disenfranchised people to further horrendous acts like this.”
Buckby is running on a platform of banning immigration to the UK for five years and halting “the Islamization of Britain.”
“While the murder of Jo Cox is tragic, we must not let this tragedy blur the fact that the Labour Party is responsible for the demographic and cultural assault on Britain which has already done great damage in areas of Yorkshire,” he said in a statement.
“The constituency is part of a region that has been turned upside down by mass immigration, with mosques sprouting like triffids, Islamic extremism proliferating, child-rape gangs still on the loose, and long-standing English communities under threat of demographic eradication.”
The man accused of Cox’s murder, Tommy Mair, 52, has been linked to far-right extremist groups.
At the initial hearing at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Saturday, Mair refused to give his name, instead telling the court: “My name is death to traitors, freedom for Britain.”
He will appear at London’s Old Bailey court on Monday, charged with murder, grievous bodily harm, possession of a firearm with intent to commit an indictable offence and possession of an offensive weapon.