Fake news could provoke an MP’S murder, says minister

‘FAKE news’ spread by websites could result in another MP being murdered, Damian Green has warned.

Mr Green, the First Secretary of State, said that websites which spread bile had to think more about “who is reading it and what are they going to do next”.

The Cabinet Minister, who is effectively Theresa May’s deputy, warned that websites that only present one side of the story risked “feeding an atmosphere of increasing hatred which at the most horrible of extremes led to the killing of Jo Cox”.

Mr Green singled out websites such as Breitbart, The Skwarkbox and The Canary for particular criticism in a speech to journalists at a lunch organised by the Parliamentary Press Gallery.

He said: “Our political discourse needs to be better than it currently is, an argument that will not be lost on many people in this room whose livelihoods are under threat from unscrupulous blogs and websites that have no regard for any attempt to check the truth.”

Raheem Kassam, a spokesman for Breitbart London, said: “Damian Green is warning that we are ‘dangerous’? Well I take pride in that. We are dangerous. Dangerous to the political elite. Dangerous to the status quo. And dangerous to the strain of left liberalism that runs through the Conservative Party. Deal with it.”