By Peter Humfrey and Elin Forslund
IN the wake of last night’s defeat for Stirling Labour Party, candidate Mary Kate Ross, has been revealed to have gone on an expletive-laden tirade in a student group chat.
The second year History and Politics student made the comments at 4 a.m., remarking: “mental how I’ve done more than you’s in life and you all sat and slagged me off in this chat”.
She went on to attack liberal voters saying: “would be better if this chat
wasn’t full of soaking wet liberals”. She then concluded her remarks saying: “you all moan about the world are judgy as f*** towards everyone and b**** like f*** off. just f*** off all of you”.
The group chat in question, with over a hundred members, was set up by University of Stirling politics students who are now in their second year, with many voting – some for the first time.
Labour’s youngest General Election candidate in Scotland, aged just 19, made the comments in the aftermath of a 14 point drop in Stirling – falling to 4,275 votes. This was the candidate’s first time running in a parliamentary election. Politics do, however, run in the family with her father, Michael Ross, being a former Labour councillor in Motherwell.
Conservative Stephen Kerr previously held the Stirling seat, but was ousted by former MEP Alyn Smith who collected 51.1 per cent of ballots cast, taking in 26,895 votes.
When approached for comment Mary Kate Ross issued the following statement: “I deeply regret making those comments in the group chat. It has been a stressful time for me as a young person in terms of my campaign and the backlash I have received. I sincerely and deeply apologise to everyone I made those comments to in a moment of heat. I very deeply regret making those comments.”
A Stirling Labour spokesperson said “We could all learn a lesson from this about the perils of checking your smartphone in the wee small hours when you are tired,but Mary Kate realises her comments were completely unacceptable and she has apologised for them”
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