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Labour frontbencher in fake news row (again)

Ian Forsyth/Getty Images

Oh dear. At the beginning of Covid, Dr Rosena Allin-Khan won plaudits across parliament for returning to do shifts on the NHS frontline. But in recent months the former deputy leader contender has earned herself the wanted reputation of being one of Parliament’s worst offenders for disseminating ‘fake news’ – no mean feat considering some of the contenders she is up against.

In January the self-styled shadow ‘cabinet’ minister for mental health sent a bizarre tweet late one Saturday night that claimed the vaccine minister Nadhim Zahawi had managed to fast track the vaccine queue. After first asking people not to pile on the minister over the unsubstantiated rumour that she herself had started, Allin-Khan finally deleted it and apologised.

Then in February, Allin-Khan circulated an image of nurses working in bin bags that contrasted PPE shortages with procurement deals and which attacked the government’s ‘profiteering, cronymism and shameful incompetence.’

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