The couple next door passionate about their opposition to Tories

Steve Bird, Edward Malnick and Patrick Sawer

AT THE height of the Conservative leadership battle, Eve Leigh posted a “tweet” about her small contribution to the debate over who will be the next British prime minister.

“Just gave Boris Johnson the finger,” she wrote, referring to her greeting for the prospective Tory leader staying at his girlfriend’s flat in the same block as Ms Leigh’s apartment in south-east London.

Ms Leigh, an American theatre producer, director and writer, has now deleted her Twitter account – possibly because the influence she and her husband, Tom Penn, have had over the leadership race became immeasurable this weekend.

In a statement issued last night Mr Penn, a “theatre maker” and composer, revealed he and his wife contacted police after hearing Mr Johnson row with Ms Symonds.

Mr Penn, 29, said “we agreed that we should call the police” after hearing a commotion. He insisted he made the call out of “concern … for the welfare and safety of our neighbours”.

He said he then decided to call The Guardian newspaper “as I felt that it was of important public interest”.

Mr Penn stressed that he is not politically active, explaining: “I, along with a lot of my neighbours all across London, voted to Remain within the EU. That is the extent of my involvement in politics.”

However, Ms Leigh’s tweet about giving Mr Johnson the “one-finger salute” and a number of others suggest she is very passionate about her opposition to the Tories.

Ms Leigh, 34, is an “experimental playwright”, a former palm reader (according to an interview in The Stage), and uses the “twittersphere” to express her loathing of Conservatives. This summer, she wrote on Twitter how “all Tories suck” and criticised Theresa May’s “insanely cruel policies towards immigrants, poor people and people of colour.”

She concluded: “If you feel sorry for her [May], have a look at yourself.” She earlier retweeted a post from an “anti-racist Jew” who said he felt “comfortable” with Mr Corbyn following the furore over claims Labour had a problem with antiSemitism.

Mr Penn, who was born in Cambridgeshire, is a trained percussionist and singer who has performed throughout Europe and is a member of the Little Bulb Theatre, based in Surrey and which tours in the south-east of England.

Like his wife, he is a playwright and, according to an online biography, has written six plays.

Earlier this year, the couple married and, according to neighbours, moved last year into the same south-east London block as Ms Symonds.

Rebecca Eve Leigh was born in New York in December 1984.

Earlier this year, one of her plays appeared in the Brexit Stage Left festival in London, a celebration of European theatre sponsored by a network of dramatists that is partfunded by the European Union.