A British lawmaker was suspended Monday after a recording emerged of her using a racial slur during a Brexit discussion at a public event. In her remarks, which were first reported by the Huffington Post, Anne Marie Morris, the ruling Conservative Party’s chief whip, told attendees at an event focusing on the U.K.’s financial sector that the prospect of leaving the European Union without a deal would pose a problem.
That, of course, wasn’t the wording that got her into trouble.
“Now I’m sure there will be many people who’ll challenge that, but my response and my request is look at the detail, it isn’t all doom and gloom,” Morris said Monday in London. “Now we get to the real nigger in the woodpile, which is, in two years what happens if there is no deal?”
The remarks drew instant backlash from Morris’s fellow lawmakers. Tim Farron, the outgoing leader of the Liberal Democrats, said the comments “belong in the era of Jim Crow laws,” and several others—including members of Morris’s party—called for Prime Minister Theresa May to take disciplinary action. May ordered Morris suspended later that day, noting that “language like this has absolutely no place in politics or in today’s society.” Morris issued an apology the same day, calling her usage of the phrase “wholly unintentional.”