LONDON (Reuters) -A British lawmaker was sentenced to 10 weeks in prison on Monday for punching one of his constituents after a night out, raising the prospect he could be ousted from parliament and trigger an electoral test for the governing Labour Party.
Mike Amesbury was suspended from Labour after CCTV footage showed him throwing a punch at a man in October and repeatedly hitting him after the man was knocked to the ground.
Amesbury, the member of parliament for Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England, initially said he felt threatened on the street.
The 55-year-old appeared at Chester Magistrates’ Court, where prosecutor Alison Storey said a member of the public approached Amesbury at a taxi queue just after 2am on October 26 to remonstrate with him about a local bridge closure.
Amesbury then knocked the man to the floor punching him at least five times when he was on the ground, she said.
He then told his victim: “You won’t threaten your MP again, will you? You fucking soft lad.”
His lawyer Richard Derby said Amesbury was remorseful and had apologised for his actions, asking for the court to impose a sentence of unpaid work.
But Judge Tan Ikram said: “Unprovoked drunken behaviour in the early hours in the streets is too serious to be dealt with by unpaid hours of work.”
Amesbury was sentenced to 10 weeks for a single count of common assault, having pleaded guilty last month. He will serve 40% of the sentence in custody.
He can now be removed from office if enough constituents support a petition calling for a new election for the parliamentary seat, which would put pressure on Labour, led by Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Amesbury won the seat comfortably for Labour in its landslide national election win in July. But since then the right-wing Reform UK party, led by Nigel Farage, has overtaken Labour in some national opinion polls.
Reform UK Chairman Zia Yusuf said in a statement: “We call on Mike Amesbury to do the honourable thing and resign immediately so a by-election can be held.”
(Reporting by Sam Tobin in London and Phil Noble in Chester; Editing by Sachin Ravikumar)
