Social media can be a minefield for anyone but when you’re an elected official navigating the cutthroat world of politics, it’s wise to take even more care than usual.
This is a message the Tory comms team might wish to reiterate to the party’s MPs after a series of embarrassing faux pas on Twitter over the last 24 hours.
Mangled British history, an extremely questionable case of mistaken identity and an overly sensitive reaction to male genitalia have all featured in the feeds of three Conservative MPs today and the last thing they’d want is to see them featured in an online roundup.
So here it is:
‘OMG A PENIS!!!’
Over the weekend, the Twitter account of Labour’s Sally Keeble retweeted a picture of a penis from the account @DickPicsCams.
She later blamed the saucy addition to her feed on a “hack”.
It’s the 21st century and most of us have seen a penis before – including, one would assume, Tory Chairman Brandon Lewis.
And an accidental retweet from a female MP is a far cry from the very real scourge of cyberflashing.
So it came as a surprise to some that Lewis appeared to take great offence at the penis and asked if Jeremy Corbyn or his Labour Party would be making an official comment on said appendage.
On Monday morning the outrage was still real, this time accompanied by a couple of exclamation marks.
So far Corbyn and the Labour Party have remained quiet and not commented on the penis.
UPDATE: Keeble tweeted on Monday afternoon to say Twitter had confirmed her account had been hacked and called for an apology from Lewis.
Mistaken identity
Next up, Nadine Dorries who on Monday morning confused two women who have nothing in common other than the fact they are both Asian.
Commenting on a tweet showing a clip of journalist Ash Sarkar, the Tory MP said she thought it showed Labour’s “prospective candidate for Chingford”.
But that would actually be Faiza Shaheen, a fact not lost on those who felt the need to reply to Dorries.
‘Oh, he’s gone...’
And to finish our troubled trio, we bring you Daniel Kawczynski, who hung up on a radio host after it was pointed out he’d made an absolute howler on Twitter last week.
The Brexit-backing Tory MP had claimed that during World War II Britain had “mortgaged herself up to the eyeballs” yet had since paid in millions to an “ungrateful EU”.
He also said there was “no Marshall Plan for us, only for Germany”, which is simply not true.
Although the tweet was sent before our allotted headline period of 24 hours, his shambolic interview with Talk Radio’s Alexis Conran is so we’re keeping it in.
Conran said: “I need to figure out whether you are someone who can be trusted as giving answers and the truth is Mr Kawczynski, is that you have got this completely wrong and it has been pointed out to on Twitter by many, many people.”
He then asked the MP to look up the Marshall Plan to check the figures.
Kawczynski said: ”I have been asked here to talk about Article 50, if you want to speak about Article 50 then fine, if you don’t then we’ll call it a day.”
Conran said: “What does that say about you Mr Kawczynski, is someone is pointing out an inconsistency in your tweet?”
Kawczynski then hung up.
Let’s face it, this post will be updated, probably.