MPs urge Sun editor to act against Jeremy Clarkson over Meghan comments

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More than 60 cross-party MPs have written to the Sun’s editor, Victoria Newton, to demand an apology and “action taken” against Jeremy Clarkson for a column where he said the Duchess of Sussex should be paraded through the streets naked.

In a letter, they said Meghan had received credible threats to her life and that columns such as Clarkson’s contributed to an “unacceptable climate of hatred and violence”.

The letter, co-ordinated by the Conservative chair of the women and equalities select committee, Caroline Nokes, was signed by Tory, Labour, Lib Dem, Green and SNP MPs, including the Conservative chair of the Treasury select committee, Harriett Baldwin, Labour’s Harriet Harman and the Green party leader, Caroline Lucas.

In an article published on Sunday in the wake of Prince Harry and Meghan’s Netflix documentary, Clarkson wrote that he loathed Meghan “on a cellular level” compared with the serial killer Rose West.

He said he was “dreaming of the day when she is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant, ‘Shame!’ and throw lumps of excrement at her”.

The Sun has since withdrawn the column at the request of Clarkson, but a statement from him promising to be more careful in future has been criticised for not including an apology.

In their letter, Nokes and the other MPs tell Newton they “condemn in the strongest possible terms the violent misogynist language … This sort of language has no place in our country and it is unacceptable it was allowed to be published in a mainstream newspaper.”

They add: “We cannot allow this type of behaviour to go unchecked any longer. We welcome the Sun’s retraction of the article and we now demand action is taken against Mr Clarkson and an unreserved apology to Ms Markle immediately.”

Others who signed the letter included Labour’s Stella Creasy, Dawn Butler and Dan Jarvis, as well as the former Conservative cabinet minister Andrea Leadsom and the Lib Dem deputy leader, Daisy Cooper.

After widespread outcry over the weekend, Clarkson issued a statement on Monday, saying: “Oh dear. I’ve rather put my foot in it. In a column I wrote about Meghan, I made a clumsy reference to a scene in Game of Thrones and this has gone down badly with a great many people. I’m horrified to have caused so much hurt and I shall be more careful in future.”

But Nokes said it was “not an apology” and tweeting the letter said: “I welcome Jeremy Clarkson’s acknowledgement that he has caused hurt … but an editorial process allowed his column to be printed unchallenged.”

The press regulator Ipso has received thousands of complaints about the piece and critics included Clarkson’s own daughter Emily, who said: “I want to make it very clear that I stand against everything my dad wrote about Meghan Markle.”

It is unclear which of Ipso’s rules could have been broken because of its broad guidelines for comment pieces. The chair of the regulator, Edward Faulks, cancelled plans to attend a private dinner with Rupert Murdoch on Monday night.