Councillor trolled colleagues on fake account

A LABOUR councillor used a fake Twitter account to abuse colleagues and blamed his wife when he was found out.

Lazzaro Pietragnoli described one fellow councillor as a “scumbag” and called another “disgraceful” from an account where he posed as a single mother living in social housing.

When confronted by his local paper, the Camden New Journal, about the abuse, he initially claimed his wife had set up the feed as she wanted to tweet anonymously.

However, this week Mr Pietragnoli, a former mayor of the London borough of Camden, back-tracked, saying he had set up the account as “prank” and his wife was “never involved”.

The bizarre turn of events began when the paper began asking who was behind the now deleted Phillmum account, a mother of three from Primrose Hill with a suspiciously in-depth knowledge of Camden council.

The account often praised the work of Mr Pietragnoli and dished out acerbic

‘I was deeply disappointed to hear that a councillor was involved with this anonymous account’

criticism and insults to other politicians on the Labour-run council.

When Maryam Eslamdoust, a Labour councillor, was chosen as the mayor in 2019, the account asked other elected officials “are you happy that this scumbag is going to be mayor of Camden?” It branded her husband, Thomas Gardiner, a “disgraceful man”. The account also fired salvoes at Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader, saying under him the party was run by a minority who “prefer Putin, Assad, Iran’s ayatollahs to freedom and democracy”.

Last week Mr Pietragnoli blamed his wife, Prof Valentina Arena. But on Wednesday he told the Journal: “I want to confirm that she [Prof Arena] was never involved in the Twitter account nor had she any knowledge of what I told you last week.”

Mr Pietragnoli has resigned as the Camden Labour group’s chief whip and referred himself to the council’s standards committee.

Georgia Gould, leader of Camden council, said: “I was deeply disappointed to hear that a councillor was involved with this anonymous account.”