After stepping down “for a period of ill health”, Labour’s gaff-prone prospective home secretary, Diane Abbott, has allegedly responded to prank e-mails, appearing to acknowledge she was in fact asked to step aside.
Ms. Abbott had pulled out of a debate with Home Secretary Amber Rudd just half an hour before it was due to start Tuesday morning. She was pictured just around the corner from the BBC Radio 4 studios, however, “not seeming very unwell”.
The next day, a notorious e-mail prankster published a correspondence allegedly with her, where she asked if Labour press officers still wanted her to “add colour to the illness story”.
However, she also told the prankster, posing as Jeremy Corbyn’s Head of Communication Seumas Milne, that she did not want to “tell untruths”. She also accidentally revealed private medical information.
The prankster, who goes by the username @SINON_REBORN on Twitter, has previously tricked Bank of England Governor Mark Carney and Barclays boss Jes Staley.
He insists he is not affiliated with any political party and claims not to have made any money out of his pranks.
The BBC and others are still not questioning Labour’s account of events. Ms. Abbott was also accused of “lying” after claiming to be “ill” after skipping the Article 50 vote in February.
Many online are speculating that Ms. Abbott was in fact ordered to step down after a row with Labour HQ and a series of disastrous interviews, notably when she had a “brain fade” and forget the cost of key policies. Recently, she appeared not to have read a major report on London policing.
Since then, Ms. Abbott has pulled out of an interview on the BBC’s Woman’s Hour programme and a London hustings debate hosted by the Evening Standard newspaper.
She has also been ridiculed for appearing to back IRA terrorists in the past and making seemingly racist comments about white people.
According to the BBC, Ms. Abbott’s break will be “indefinite”. Shadow Minister Lyn Brown, who resigned last year in protest of Mr. Corbyn’s leadership, has replaced her.
On Wednesday, Jeremy Corbyn refused to say whether Ms. Abbott would be given the job of home secretary if Labour won on Thursday. He said only that she had done “a good job” but was “not well today”.
A statement from the party said: “Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Labour Party, has asked Lyn Brown to stand in for Diane Abbott as Shadow Home Secretary for the period of her ill health.”
The Labour leader added: “She’s not well a couple of days and she’s taking a break from the campaign.
“Of course Diane is somebody that works extremely hard and represents her community very well, and I have to say has received totally unfair levels of attack and abuse, not just recently, over many years.”
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