This Tory MP should be accountable for sexing up her Facebook post with an added 'death threat'

Tory MP for Telford, Lucy Allan, joined other MPs Simon Danczuk and Stella Creasey by coming out about the abuse she has faced online after casting her vote in support for extending air strikes in Syria.

She posted a message on her Facebook page as being "from Rusty from Dawley" - the pseudonym of it turned out, Adam Watling - son of Telford & Wrekin Labour councillor Paul Watling.

The message as posted read: “Unless you’ve gone ‘full Cameron’ rendering you an empty shell of a human being containing nothing but pure venom and spite for anyone worse off than you, in which case there is no hope. Unless you die.”

As it transpired, the writer of the original email was around to point out an error in her post. Commenting underneath the status update he noted: “You added the bit where it says ‘Unless you die’. I never wrote that”, with a screenshot of his original email attached to the comment. He later added: “I would never wish death on anyone. Even a soulless Tory liar such as yourself.”

That’s right: the Iraq war was scandalised with sexed up dossiers, and now the Syrian conflict has brought us a sexed up status update. Allan seemingly editorialised the original message by adding the words “unless you die” making it appear as though “Rusty” had sent her a death threat.

Allan told the BBC: “I posted actual comments made to me on the same day, although not in the same email. Comments were added to the post as they came in. I posted them to show examples of the type of unacceptable online abuse that comes in most days and that most people tolerate silently.” What she had presented was a mixed platter of her suffering.

She later said to The Independent that: “There was a genuine death threat” and “I did not publish an email from anyone, neither from a constituent, nor from someone using an alias. I published extracts from communications with an alias”. She claimed that the “Rusty” communication was “part of a campaign”.

There have been no front page splashes exposing the incident and apart from a smattering of coverage, the whole thing has been largely overlooked. This is interesting since the media seem to think that Jeremy Corbyn and his wife wearing matching grey track suits or what John McDonnell reads counts as news.

MPs - unless they are Corbynites or better still the man himself - appear to be able to behave with impunity, and then sit back and laugh at the plebs when they have the audacity to express opinions about their actions in parliament.

I hope that the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards looks into this, because when MPs vote in parliament on our behalf and post publically on their social media platforms, they should be accountable to their electorate.