Menu
Thu, 18 April 2024

Newsletter sign-up

Subscribe now
The House Live All
Education
By Bishop of Leeds
Health
Press releases

MP Jared O'Mara's Twitter account hijacked as angry staff member quits

2 min read

Jared O'Mara's Twitter account has been used to attack the Sheffield Hallam MP as a member of staff publicly handed in his notice.


The MP's communications manager Gareth Arnold used a Twitter thread from Mr O'Mara's own account to accuse him of showing "inexcusable contempt" for his constituents.

Mr O'Mara quit Labour in 2018 after being suspended by the party for a string of controversial online posts about women and LGBT people.

The thread of tweets was signed off by Mr Arnold, a member of Mr O'Mara's staff in the South Yorkshire seat.

The account said: "Jared, you are the most disgustingly morally bankrupt person I have ever had the displeasure of working with."

It added: "You do not care about your constituents. You do not care about anyone but yourself."

Another post meanwhile read: "Sheffield Hallam deserves so much better than you. You have wasted opportunities which people dare not to even dream of."

The thread also urged the MP to "call a by-election" and said constitents had been left "desperate for represenation" by Mr O'Mara.

Mr Arnold - who insisted he had pursued "every avenue possible" before launching the flurry of unauthorised tweets - has a history of making online pranks, having set up the parody 'Britain Furst' Twitter account in 2014 to mock the far-right party.

The Yorkshire Post revealed earlier this year that Mr O'Mara had been forced to shut his office for a month because his staff had either left post or been fired.

But last week the independent MP  - who ousted Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg as an MP in 2017 - said he intended to stand in the next election.

"I am going nowhere, and I'm here for you whether you want me here for you or not," he said.

PoliticsHome Newsletters

PoliticsHome provides the most comprehensive coverage of UK politics anywhere on the web, offering high quality original reporting and analysis: Subscribe

Categories

Political parties