Infamous “snob” Emily Thornberry, the Labour Party’s Shadow Attorney General for England and Wales, declared on Wednesday that she wouldn’t date anyone who hasn’t had a coronavirus vaccine.

Lady Nugee — also known as Emily Thornberry — insisted she “wouldn’t go out with someone who wasn’t vaccinated” while appearing on ITV’s Peston programme to discuss the results of their Valentine’s Day poll.

The poll, which asked about dating preferences ranked an individual’s vaccination status as second on a list of topics that respondees considered couples should agree on, with Brexit listed as the top issue.

When questioned by the hostess about what her red lines in a relationship are Thornberry insisted that she wouldn’t consider anyone who wasn’t vaccinated as a partner, the Daily Mail reports.

Even when pressed by the hostess who asked Thornberry: “you’re totally into this guy and he’s like I’m not vaccinated and you’re like that’s it?”

“I’m out. Yeah, really”, Thornberry replied firmly, not even making a distinction for those who may have a medical exemption.

The other guest on the show, Bob Seely, the Conservative MP for the Isle of Wight questioned Thornberry’s response saying, “But hold on, he doesn’t have to be a conspiracy theorist”.

“I don’t care” retorted Thornberry. “It shows him to be selfish, to not care about community, to not have a sense of responsibility. I think that we owe it to others to be vaccinated, not just to ourselves”, she continued.

“I’ll tell the girlfriend you disapprove”, remarked Seely after Thornberry finished her piece.

Thornberry is no stranger to controversy and one episode of her infamous snobbery saw her forced to resign from her Attorney General position in 2014 after tweeting out in contempt of a working-class home while campaigning in Rochester.

The MP for Islington South and Finsbury tweeted a now-deleted photo of a white van — cultural shorthand for working-class occupations in the UK — parked outside a home adorned with three England flags, alongside the caption “Image from #Rochester”. The communication, brief as it was, came to be widely regarded as an effort to attempt to ridicule the homeowner by suggesting he was a working-class stereotype.

The move was generally considered ill-advised for a senior member of a party that officially professes to campaign on behalf of working-class people.

Dan Ware, the man whose home and truck was the subject of Thornberry’s ridicule said he’s “not got a clue” who Emily Thornberry is, but that “she’s a snob”.

Attempting to defend herself Thornberry claimed she had “never seen a house where people can’t see out of the window because of England flags”.

Unlike the United States where showing a flag is generally considered normal behaviour across the mainstream political spectrum, in Britain displaying the Union Flag or the St George’s Cross on your home can be is deemed as distasteful by some, particularly amid the middle-class left, a long-unspoken view that was dramatically underlined by the Lady Nugee scandal in 2014.

Thornberry is not alone in letting the mask slip, and in doing so swinging a wrecking ball at the source of Labour’s traditional power-base. Indeed, Labour as a party has chipped away at its working-class supporters for years, with the 2019 general election seeing multiple seats in the ‘Red Wall’ – meaning those which were traditionally classed as impregnable Labour strongholds due to their working-class demographics – voting for the Conservative Party.

In one of the most controversial moments of self-sabotage in recent history, former Labour leader and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown got caught in a hot-mic moment calling a Labour voter “bigoted”.

Meeting the public on the campaign trail in the run-up to the 2010 general election, Brown was challenged on taxation and levels of mass migration by a 65-year-old widow.

Getting into the back seat of a chauffer-driven car and being whisked away, Brown forgot he was still wired with a radio-microphone for television broadcast. As the car swept away, his words were transmitted to a television crew when he said: “That was a disaster… should never have put me in with that woman. Whose idea was that? … she was just a sort of bigoted woman. She said she used be Labour. I mean it’s just ridiculous”.

Brown faded from public life shortly afterwards.