Labour’s dirty tricks insult the work of Jo Cox

AfTer one of the ugliest by-elections of recent times, social media is still awash with stories of racist abuse and misinformation in Batley and Spen.

The dirty tricks included a Labour leaflet with a photograph of Boris Johnson shaking hands with the indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi next to a slogan warning voters not to risk a ‘Tory MP who is not on your side’.

it was clear dog-whistle politics, playing up to the perceived hostility of the constituency’s large Muslim population to hindu-dominated india and the leaflet was rightly condemned by Labour friends Of india.

So what would Lance Price, a senior aide to Tony Blair in 10 Downing Street and friend of the winning candidate Kim Leadbeater, have made of the ugly smear?

Leadbeater is the sister of Jo cox, the Batley MP who was murdered by a right-wing fanatic in 2016 and Price was once communications director of the Jo cox foundation, which was set up to ‘bring together people and organisations to build the fairer, kinder, more tolerant world the late MP Jo cox believed in’.

The Modi smear doesn’t quite fit in with that admirable philosophy. Nor does it square with Price’s past association with the indian leader.

in 2015 he was given unfettered access to Modi in the course of writing a book called The Modi effect: inside Narendra Modi’s campaign To Transform india, which was widely regarded as a gushing work of hagiography.

Quite how he’d be received in New Delhi these days is anyone’s guess.