Rumours

 

This really ought to be one for the BBC's disinformation unit, but they're too busy obsessing about QAnon...

The shadow Minister for Mental Health Dr Rosena Allin-Khan had quite a night on Twitter yesterday, spreading rumours that Nadhim Zahawi "got him and his family vaccinated in Wandsworth":

I have heard rumours that Nadhim Zahawi got him and his family vaccinated in Wandsworth. Nadhim, can you please tell us if it's true? I really hope it's not, unless you meet the necessary criteria. There are millions of vulnerable people waiting patiently in the queue.

Along with "I have heard rumours...", later came "I do not know if this is true but...", along with further demands for answers from Mr Zahawi. 

She then was taken aback by the inevitable nastiness of the Twitter response. 

"Please avoid throwing unnecessary attacks at the Minister", she begged, before beginning to delete her own tweets. 

"I’ve deleted my previous tweet to Nadhim Zahawi as I understand that people were seeing it as a pile on", she wrote. 

And finally, to her great credit, she tweeted a proper apology: 

I have deleted my earlier tweets which were inappropriate and wrong. I regret sharing unsubstantiated claims about the Minister and I apologise to him and his family.

Nadhim Zahawi replied:

Thank you for apologising, the accusation was not true. It is sad you chose to act like this, we all need to work together to beat this awful disease.

What people might have missed is that two other Labour MPs ended up having to delete tweets too. Karl Turner MP deleted one defending Dr Rosena and Barbara Keeley MP withdrew a retweet of Dr Rosena.

It's a cautionary tale that you might think would be perfect for Marianna, Shayan, Mike & Co., but they seem to be far too busy checking whose QAnon videos have been removed from YouTube to be remotely interested in it. Wonder if they'll get round to it eventually?