Two Labour MPs, an ex-lover aide and a police probe over angry tweets
YOU’D think they would have their hands full dealing with the weighty political matters of the day.
However, it seems one of Labour’s rising stars is more concerned with an alleged ‘jealousy-fuelled’ spat with a fellow MP’s researcher.
Claiming she was being ‘ harassed’ on Twitter by the aide, Naz Shah called in the police to investigate.
She complained about two tweets sent by Elaina Cohen – an assistant and former lover of Mrs Shah’s party colleague Khalid Mahmood.
Mrs Shah, 42, is alleged to have told officers that Miss Cohen, 56, sent the tweets because she was jealous of her friendship with Mr Mahmood, the Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Barr.
However, last night she was accused off ‘abusing her position’ by involving the police in the matter.
Miss Cohen, a former journalist, told how a woman police officer turned up at her Birmingham city centre apartment on Friday to deliver a ‘warning’ over the two tweets.
The first concerned Mrs Shah’s ‘ acting abilities and political hypocrisy’ – a reference to the MP’s stance as a moderate Labour parliamentarian despite admitting she voted for Respect Party candidate George Galloway at a by-election in 2012. She later took his Bradford seat last year.
A second alleged the MP – who has recently been made a parliamentary aide to Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell – was an ‘antiZionist’ who had once campaigned for Mr Galloway.
Both messages were sent on February 9. Miss Cohen said yesterday she was initially petrified something had happened to one of her children when police knocked on her door last week.
She claimed that out of around 10,000 tweets she has sent, only a dozen or so mentioned Mrs Shah.
She added: ‘ It’s hardly harassment. The policewoman who visited me said that Mrs Shah believes I’m jealous of her close relationship with Khalid.
‘I believe they are close friends but I have nothing to be jealous about. Khalid and I separated a decade ago and if I was jealous of all his friendships since then my Twitter feed would be full! I still work for him because I’m good at my job. We are just colleagues.’
In a further twist yesterday, Miss Cohen claimed she had been sent home on gardening leave by Mr Mahmood while the matter is investigated.
Miss Cohen, a divorced mother of two, has worked in Mr Mahmood’s office for 12 years and also advises him on terrorism matters in his role as chairman of the all-party group on tackling terrorism.
Her relationship as the MP’s lover hit the headlines in 2009 after it emerged he had claimed hundreds of pounds in parliamentary expenses to put his girlfriend up in a London hotel. Mr Mahmood, who becamee England’s first firstMuslimMuslim MP 15 years ago, briefly used the hotel as his second home after separating from his partner Nasim Akhtar.
Miss Cohen is Jewish but has a long-standing interest in Pakistan, where she first met Mr Mahmood during a visit. She claimed her motivation for sending the tweets was her issues with Mrs Shah’s politics – claiming she was ‘very concerned about her position and influence in a very vulnerable community and occasionally I call her out on it as I call out other politicians.’ She added: ‘I have tweeted
Com about her her... I hav have never called her anti-Semitic. I tweet on political matters. Naz Shah is just trying to gag me on my political views of her links with George Galloway and the Labour party leadership’s antiZionist stance. Naz Shah is an aide to John McDonnell. It’s the Corbynistas, if they don’t like someone they try to get them sacked.’
She has sent a formal complaint to the Labour chief whip Rosie Winterton, alleging the ‘frankly ludicrous allegations... constituted a complete waste of valuable police time and resource’. The party declined to comment last night.
Miss Cohen said she had never had a conversation with Mrs Shah.
Mrs Shah, a single mother of three, was selected just weeks before the general election as the Labour Party made a major push to win back Mr Galloway’s seat in Bradford West. The former chairman of a mental health charity won the seat with an 11,000 majority in a campaign in which she highlighted her traumatic background, including an arranged marriage at 15. She also campaigned to free her mother Zoora, who was jailed for poisoning her partner believing he was planning to sexually abuse her three daughters.
Mrs Shah did not respond to requests for a comment yesterday. Mr Mahmood declined to confirm Miss Cohen’s suspension, saying it was an ‘employment issue’.
West Yorkshire Police – Mrs Shah’s local force – said it received a complaint of harassment relating to the use of social media and an ‘appropriate warning’ was given by colleagues in the West Midlands.
‘It’s all the Corbynistas’