UK Conservative candidate apologises over motherhood remarks

London: One of the two Conservative candidates to be British prime minister has apologised for any hurt she might have caused her rival with comments that suggested being a mother was an advantage in the job.

Andrea Leadsom said sorry to Theresa May, who has no children, amid the uproar touched off by her Times of London interview. Leadsom insisted she didn't want motherhood to be part of the campaign.

The two women are in a Conservative Party runoff to replace Prime Minister David Cameron, who is resigning after British voters rejected his advice and chose to leave the European Union in a referendum last month.

Leadsom told the Times that "I feel that being a mum means you have a very real stake in the future of our country, a tangible stake."

Leadsom later accused the newspaper of practicing "gutter journalism" and twisting her sentiments in the story, run under the headline "being a mother gives me edge on May- Leadsom."

The Times released a recording of part of the interview to show it had quoted Leadsom accurately.

Leadsom told Monday's Daily Telegraph newspaper that she believed that having children has "no bearing on the ability to be PM."

"I deeply regret that anyone has got the impression that I think otherwise," she said.

Leadsom's rivals said both her comments and her subsequent flip-flopping show the junior energy minister doesn't have the experience under pressure required to be prime minister. Her allies accused supporters of May, Britain's interior minister of attempting to undermine Leadsom.

British politics has been thrown into turmoil by the referendum result, which has sparked leadership struggles in both the governing Conservative and main opposition Labour parties.

Labour lawmaker Angela Eagle was Monday launching an attempt to unseat party leader Jeremy Corbyn, a veteran left-winger who has a strong base of support among Labour members but little backing from the party's 229 lawmakers.

Labour legislators have passed a no-confidence motion in Corbyn, and many of his top team in Parliament resigned from their jobs to protest his leadership. He is refusing to resign and says he can win a leadership battle, which would be decided by a vote of party members.

Many Labour lawmakers believe the staunchly socialist, resolutely uncharismatic Corbyn lacks broad appeal to voters. Eagle said he "doesn't connect enough to win an election."