Labour member who introduced Jeremy Corbyn on stage quits after offensive tweets emerge

The tweets, sent when she was 14, referred to black and Jewish people

Picture: (Anthony Devlin / Getty)

A Labour member who introduced Jeremy Corbyn at a campaign event has apologised after it emerged she had sent a series of offensive tweets when she was 14 years old.

Bethany Barker, who is now 19 and general secretary of Nottingham Labour Students, said she was “beyond upset” that she had sent the tweets as a teenager and said she was immediately stepping down from her role.

Ms Barker had introduced Mr Corbyn at the party’s local election launch in Newark last month.

In a message posted on the Nottingham Labour Students Facebook page Ms Barker said: “I’m absolutely horrified and beyond disgusted about these tweets and they are in no [way] representative of the views I hold now.

“I am beyond upset that I could ever say such things. I have changed so much since I was 14, I was not nice and my past is something I am ashamed of.”

In the tweets dating from 2012 to 2014 she had said that her cooking chicken and rice amounted to “supporting the n***** race”. In another she referred to a “black f****** b****”. One tweet made a reference to a “jew cap”.

The incident comes after a row over alleged antisemitism in the Labour party.

100 Labour MPs this year signed a pledge condemning a “betrayal” of party values for the non-expulsion of Ken Livingstone over controversial comments about Hitler and Zionism.