Candidate's shame after sick tweet unearthed joking his name was 'rape'

An election candidate vying to become a Conservative councillor says he is ‘ashamed’ of a tweet in which he said his name was ‘rape’ and people would be ‘screaming it later’.

Kurt McPartland, who is standing for the Tories in the Tameside ward of Dukinfield and Stalybridge, has also apologised after he was accused of misogyny, and ‘fat-shaming’ a Labour councillor in their online election posts.

The controversial tweet, posted in 2016 from his personal account, and which is still available online but which has not been active since 2018, states: ‘Hello, my name is rape. Remember it, you’ll be screaming it later’.

In a statement to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, Mr McPartland said: “I tweeted this when I was 19 nearly seven years ago when I was hanging around the wrong people, this is one of the things I’m ashamed of when I was younger, amongst many other things. I’ve clearly matured since then.”

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In the run-up to Thursday’s local elections on May 4, Mr McPartland had also shared an attack advert on Facebook about Labour councillor Eleanor Wills, one of three produced for each sitting Labour councillor in the ward, which he subsequently apologised for. He said he was sorry if it ‘came across’ as misogynistic.

The post used an out-of-date picture of Ms Wills prior to her losing weight with among a list of her achievements as cabinet member for health Tameside being branded ‘fat capital of the UK with two thirds of residents classed as overweight’.

It also criticised the high rates of teenage pregnancy and low life expectancy in the borough.

Ms Wills said the picture was taken before she later lost five stone, and it felt