You can trust Tories - you still trust GPs after Harold Shipman, says Wakefield candidate
16 June 2022, 19:13 | Updated: 16 June 2022, 19:17
A Tory candidate for the Wakefield by-election has said voters can still trust the Conservatives because people still trust GPs even after "Dr Death" Harold Shipman's killings.
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Nadeem Ahmed made the bizarre comparison between his embattled party and the serial killer doctor while campaigning for the upcoming vote.
He is hoping to win an unlikely victory to replace Imran Ahmad Khan, who was convicted of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy.
Khan's subsequent resignation triggered a by-election the Tories are expected to lose in the wake of Partygate and the cost of living crisis.
"It was the right thing to happen to him," Mr Ahmed told the Telegraph about Khan.
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"He's in prison, which is the right place. As a teacher, a father, and as a human being, what he did was wrong.
"He's been convicted of that offence, and I cannot stand here and say that was right. It was absolutely disgusting.
"And the people of Wakefield know that he was one bad apple."
But he then made a bizarre comparison between the Conservative Party and Harold Shipman, the doctor who could have killed as many as 250 people.
"Harold Shipman committed suicide in Wakefield prison. He was a GP, he was a trusted professional, just like teachers and others," the former Wakefield council leader said.
"When they put a vaccine in our arms, we trust what they are putting in us.
"Have we stopped trusting GPs? No, we still trust GPs and we know that he was one bad apple in there."
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The Tories are contesting both Wakefield and the Tiverton and Honiton seat after two scandals.
The latter is being contested after Neil Parish resigned, having admitted twice watching porn in Parliament.
One attempt was deliberate while the other was an accident when he was searching online for Dominator combine harvesters, he said.
Khan, who was the first Tory elected to represent Wakefield since 1931, was jailed for 18 months for the 2008 attack.
Conservatives fear losing Wakefield to Labour - a return to the red wall - and losing Tiverton to the Liberal Democrats. The by-elections will be held on June 23.
