Lucy Powell returns to her Mean Girls past

Oh dear. After Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader, Lucy Powell was labelled a mean girl thanks to her decision to take to social media and declare that she had never, ever met the man.

Now the Labour MP is in the naughty corner once again. Only this time it’s the Labour sisterhood she’s managed to offend. After the former shadow education secretary wrote an op-ed about childcare, Angela Rayner — the current shadow education secretary — took to the female Labour MPs’ WhatsApp group to share her thoughts. Powell replied thanking Rayner for her insights, before firing off a few catty messages revealing how she really felt.

Alas there was a snag. Although Powell had meant to bitch in a WhatsApp group of moderate Labour MPs, she accidentally wrote her comments in the all-women group she was being rude about.

So, how bad is it? Well, as the Sunday Times reports, she complained about the attention being paid to her piece when the party faces a much bigger problem thanks to the overall ‘ludicrous, nonsensical, pretend, unreal, bollocks position’ of the party.