Female Labour MP’s ‘naked photos and acid threats against her love rival’
A LABOUR MP threatened to douse a love rival in acid and reveal naked pictures of her in a harassment campaign, a court heard yesterday.
Claudia Webbe allegedly made a string of silent and abusive phone calls to her partner’s ex-girlfriend Michelle Merritt, 59, telling her to ‘get out of my relationship’.
The 56-year-old MP for Leicester East is said to have accused Miss Merritt of ‘slagging around with my boyfriend’ and allegedly threatened to send naked pictures of Miss Merritt to her children.
Westminster Magistrates’ Court heard yesterday that Webbe had become ‘obsessed’ with the amount of contact her boyfriend Lester Thomas, a Chelsea football scout, had with his former girlfriend.
In a recorded phone call played to the court from April 25 last year, Webbe was heard telling Miss Merritt: ‘Get out of my relationship. I’ve seen all of your posts, I’ve seen all of your naked pictures, I’ve seen all of your relationship with Lester.
‘Get out of my relationship. Otherwise I will kill all of your family and I will show them all of your pictures.’
The executive assistant immediately called police, telling the 999 call handler: ‘She works for the Labour Party, she is in the public arena... She’s threatened to throw acid over me, she knows where I live, she’s going to send pictures of me and him to my daughters.’
The court heard that the former Islington councillor also bombarded Miss Mer
‘Unnerving, especially as a woman’
ritt with silent calls during a campaign of harassment between September 2018 and April last year.
Susannah Stevens, prosecuting, said: ‘The calls were made from a withheld number and were silent calls of short duration. The calls tended to occur when Miss Merritt was with Lester Thomas.’
She went on: ‘This appears to be the defendant’s obsession, the fact that Miss Merritt would not stop seeing her partner.’ Police spoke to Webbe and ordered her to stop calling Miss Merritt in April 2019, but she is said to have made another 16 calls.
Yesterday the alleged victim told the court she had dated Mr Thomas about 15 years ago and the pair got back in touch in 2015 when she moved to east London.
She saw him ‘about once every two weeks’ and said they were ‘good friends’. Miss Merritt discovered the MP was responsible for the calls after searching online for her phone number which is publicly listed, she said. She then phoned Webbe back and recorded the call on April 25 last year.
Giving evidence, Miss Merritt said: ‘There was a pattern that whenever I had even met with Lester Thomas, if we had gone out for a drink or something, there would be a phone call.
‘When you are being called and no one answers, it’s unnerving, especially as a woman who lives alone.’ Webbe, who now sits in the Commons as an independent after being suspended by the Labour Party, denies a single count of harassment.
When asked whether she had threatened Miss Merritt, she said: ‘This is not something that’s in my character and it’s not something I would ever do.’
Webbe claimed she had only tried to contact Miss Merritt to ask her why she was breaking lockdown rules by spending time with Mr Thomas. She added: ‘I did not threaten to disclose photos of her.’
She told the court: ‘I felt no anger toward Michelle and I’m sorry for what that tape portrays... it wasn’t intended to cause Michelle any harm.’ The trial continues.