Labour MP’s vaccine fake news backfires

Oh dear. It's not been a good weekend on vaccine news for the New York Times or the Labour party. The one time paper of record ran a misleading report claiming the UK planned to give Britons a dangerous cocktail of Covid vaccines. Despite that claim being debunked, it wasn't enough to stop a Labour MP from sharing similar comments.

Now there is another incident to add to the list. The self-titled shadow 'cabinet' minister for mental health Dr Rosena Allin-Khan set the cat among the pigeons late on Saturday night with a series of extraordinary tweets. The Labour MP – who is a trained doctor – took to social media to announce that she had heard rumours that the vaccine minister Nadhim Zahawi had managed to fast track the vaccine queue – with he and his family vaccinated Wandsworth. Allin-Khan helpfully '@-ed' Zahawi in the tweet.

It wasn't long before the Labour MP began to get cold feet – stating that people ought not to pile on the minister over the unsubstantiated rumour that she herself had started.

DT Dr Rosena Allin-Khan: I’ve deleted my previous tweet to Nadhim Zahawi as I understand that people were seeing it as a pile on, which was… https://t.co/v213pnrcRm https://t.co/Wai7oXLgjk

— Tweets MPs Delete (@deletedbyMPs) January 3, 2021

She eventually went the whole hog, deleted all of her tweets and apologised for spreading unsubstantiated rumours. What ever did Team Starmer say to her?

I have deleted my earlier tweets which were inappropriate and wrong. I regret sharing unsubstantiated claims about the Minister and I apologise to him and his family.

— Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (@DrRosena) January 3, 2021