After a tough day yesterday for Corbyn’s team following his chaotic reshuffle, there was only one thing left to do to save the day: send Diane Abbott onto the airwaves. The gaffe-prone shadow international development secretary appeared on Newsnight to wax lyrical about the state of Corbyn’s slightly reshuffled Shadow Cabinet.
When put to her that things might not be quite so rosy given that three shadow ministers had resigned in protest of Corbyn’s reshuffle, she said it wasn’t really a great loss given that they all use to be special advisers who lacked real life experience:
In case you missed: @hackneyabbott on the sacked "special advisers" from the frontbench https://t.co/xkVzH3WrUh
— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) January 7, 2016
Alas the MPs she was referring too were not going to take the comments lying down. Jonathan Reynolds took the bold step of pointing out that he has never actually been a special adviser:
https://twitter.com/jreynoldsMP/status/684872565349838848
Stephen Doughty also hit back that he had spent seven years working in the charity sector before going into politics:
Nonsense @HackneyAbbott I worked 7 yrs for @Oxfam @worldvision SPAD 18 mths at @DFID_UK u'd think Shad Int Dev Sec might know #bbcnewsnight
— Stephen Doughty MP (@SDoughtyMP) January 6, 2016
While Abbott knows a thing or two herself about being a career politician — she has now found herself in the firing line once again for another gaffe. Her Labour comrade Reynolds has responded by labelling her a complete ‘sell-out’ for sending her son to private school:
https://twitter.com/jreynoldsMP/status/684872784133099520
Reynolds is of course referring to an incident back in 2003 when it was revealed that Abbott had sent her son to a £10,000-a-year private school rather than a state school — after she had criticised Tony Blair for sending his son, Euan, to the London Oratory, a selective school.
Well they do say if you play with fire, you get burned.
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