Labour ‘leader’ finds time to tweet about Olympics since Begum cleared of wrongful charges – but neither he nor Jess Phillips have mentioned Labour MP Begum
Labour party leader Keir Starmer has found time in his schedule this evening to post an unpopular and derided tweet about British Olympic medals.
However, at the time of writing – and more than three hours after the verdict broke – he had not made any mention of Labour MP Apsana Begum’s acquittal in court today on wrongful charges of housing fraud, charges that had many observers questioning the motivation and driver behind the Establishment’s determination to prosecute.
Begum’s predicament had been driven by the need to escape an abusive situation – yet the Twitter feed of Labour’s Shadow Minister for Domestic Violence and Safeguarding, Jess Phillips, had also been silent on the verdict up to the time of writing, depite prompts from observers and a request from Skwawkbox.
Neither the decision to prosecute Begum nor the lack of a welcome for the verdict from the Labour leader have gone down well:
At least parts of the Labour right appear to have been hoping for Apsana Begum to be convicted, judging by vile and Islamophobic tweets about the fact that former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell appeared in court as a character witness for the Poplar and Limehouse MP. The failure of Keir Starmer and his front bench to support a colleague during her trial is damning – but their failure to even mention the not-guilty verdict, let alone welcome it, is utterly appalling.
Yesterday, a day or so after Skwawkbox criticised him for not defending the RNLI from attack by the far right for rescuing drowning asylum seekers, Starmer finally put out a tweet. If he does the same in the case of Apsana Begum, he’ll be fooling nobody.
Update: Apsana Begum has put out a statement on her acquittal in which she said that the prosecution was ‘vexatious’ and ‘driven by malicious intent’:
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