WHITE Van Man snob Emily Thornberry has finally admitted it was a mistake to sneer at a voter who draped his house in St Georges flags.
But the Shadow Foreign Secretary also said she regretted failing to explain her motives behind her decision to mock Dan Ware for displaying three England flags on the front of his house in 2014.
She claimed her silence allowed people to put their own prejudices onto it and said it was unfair to accuse her of sneering at working class people.
Ms Thornberry is on the verge of being dumped out of the Labour leadership race after securing just 10 of the 22 nominations she needs from colleagues to meet todays deadline to enter the next stage.
As she made a last-ditch bid for support, she owned up to the gaffe in 2014, which got her sacked from the Shadow Cabinet, and insisted: I don’t sneer at people.
Ms Thornberry took a picture of his white transit van in front of his house with the sneering caption Image from Rochester when she visited the Kent constituency during a by-election there in five years ago.
Speaking on the Andrew Marr Show yesterday she admitted it was a mistake to post the picture on social media but then went on to explain her decision.
Ms Thornberry said: The mistake I made – and I made a mistake – was I took a photograph of a house that was covered in flags many months after the World Cup.
I was taking a series of photographs during a by-election in order to explain to people what a by-election is like.
I was asked to resign – I did; I was asked not to make any comment – I did.
‘I’M PROUD OF THAT’
That was my mistake, because there isn’t any commentary on that.
And so what happened was that people put their own prejudices into that and said, I was doing this that I was doing that.
And the truth of the matter is, I was brought up on a council estate house that looks very similar to this. My brother was a builder until he had an accident, I’ve got a sister who’s a bus driver.
I don’t sneer at people – it’s not fair to say.
I am a successful woman, but I have had a struggle getting here. But I’ve been successful and I’m proud of that.
And actually if the Labour party is not proud of people who are successful, what are we about?
In the interview Ms Thornberry admitted she had suffered a slow start to the leadership contest, which has seen her received just 10 nominations so far.
That puts her on the verge of falling at the first hurdle ahead of todays 2.30pm deadline to receive 22 nominations from MPs or MEPs.
Asked if she will make the cut, the Shadow Foreign Secretary said: Yeah I think so. Whats happened is weve only had a week to get the nominations in. And theres a large number of MPs who havent nominated yet and many of them have wanted to speak to their party members, they wanted to go to the hustings and think about this because obviously its a really important decision.
But from the conversations that Ive had this weekend, Im fairly confident that as long as I dont get any slippage, Ill be fine – Im going to get over the line.
