John McDonnell tweets abuse at himself

While the abuse Labour MPs — including Stella Creasy and Ann Coffey — have received since they voted for airstrikes has been much-reported, what about the Labour politicians who voted against airstrikes on Syria?

According to John McDonnell, these MPs are subject to online abuse too. The Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer appeared to try and prove this point over the weekend, by sharing a tweet directed at McDonnell which criticised him for showing ‘sympathy towards the cause of terrorists’. Alas, the mentioned abuse came from his own account, so he was in fact just tweeting abuse at himself:

As users began to question whether he had meant to tweet abuse at himself from a different account, McDonnell hastily deleted the tweet. However, he says it is all down to a simple misunderstanding: he had meant to retweet abuse he had received earlier that day:

For anyone confused this was a tweet I received earlier today which I retweeted but which has since been deleted