Bradley’s evening rivalled his ‘please retweet’ apology to Jeremy Corbyn
Ben Bradley had a bad day on Friday as he tried to justify his and his party’s vote to keep poor children hungry during school holidays in the middle of the coronavirus crisis and the resulting even greater hardship for poor families.
On Thursday evening, Bradley had tweeted to footballer Marcus Rashford claiming that a school in Bradley’s constituency agreed with Bradley’s position on free school meals – and then on Friday he even sent Rashford a snarky-sounding reminder that he hadn’t responded:
But shortly afterward, one of the school’s governors tweeted a response, advising that he had spoken to the head and asking Bradley to correct his ‘false’ comment, because both governor and head agreed their pupils desperately need free school meals:
But the ‘fun’ didn’t end there. Bradley got into a Twitter conversation with a fellow right-winger – and when his interlocutor scornfully compared free school meals with ‘cash direct to a crack den and brothel’, Bradley responded:
That’s what [free school meal] vouchers in the summer effectively did.
Labour’s Angela Rayner tweeted to condemn Bradley’s comment, he responded indignantly that what she had tweeted was ‘NOT TRUE’.
Here’s that exchange:
Bradley has previously said that unemployed people should be sterilised.
But most infamously, in 2018 he was forced to tweet an abject apology to Jeremy Corbyn after Corbyn’s lawyers threatened legal action over Bradley’s nonsensical claim that Corbyn had been a Czech spy – and to ask everyone who read it to ‘retweet’ it:
It is believed to have been the most popular Tory tweet in history – shared, to date, almost 60,000 times. It’s possible Bradley’s day yesterday rivalled that 2018 day for embarrassment.
Journalist Dawn Foster observed succinctly that Bradley was ‘having a mare’:
It’s hard to disagree – and Bradley himself seemed to grasp it – and was still denying saying what Rayner accused him of:
At the time of writing, however, he had not deleted his tweet claiming the school head agreed with him on free school meals, in spite of the public request to correct his claim.
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