Lucy Powell had tweeted almost 12,000 times by the time she helped organise the Ed Miliband Russell Brand interview in 2015 despite her claim today that it was before the ‘social media age.’ Eh…
Powell was vice-chairman of Labour’s election campaign at the time. Powell told Sky News this morning:
“We weren’t in the social media age at the time, so where you could maybe search things up and see allegations or things about somebody… And, as I say, if there was any suggestion at all, we were dealing with someone who was a known sexual predator at the time then, of course, no one would have done that… We didn’t know at the time and unfortunately, maybe had people come forward or felt able to… it was a different era.”
Records from Powell’s Twitter account in mid-2015 show that she had already posted 11,600 tweets by that time, having joined in 2009. All pre-social media, according to her…
Miliband had also joined the platform in 2009 and had tweeted 4,687 times by April 2015, when the Brand interview took place. Then social media got invented…
Lucy Powell told Sky News that the Ed Miliband-Russell Brand interview happened in part because the ‘social media age’ had not begun by 2015:
“Look, I mean, he approached the Labour Party, he approached the campaign team, and we’re in very different times now. We weren’t in the social media age at the time – where you could maybe search things up and see allegations about somebody at the time. and as I say, if there was any suggestion at all, we were dealing with someone who was a known sexual predator at the time, then, of course, you know, no one would have done that. But as I say, he was a well known public figure. Lots of people from Hollywood to the BBC to many others gave this person a very, very powerful platform. And we didn’t know at the time, unfortunately. It was a different era.”