Political suicide by Twitter

The Times reports:

The general election campaign claimed its first scalp today when Labour sacked one of its candidates in Scotland who posted dozens of offensive comments on his Twitter page.

The spectacular “Twitter suicide” overshadowed Labour’s formal campaign launch in Scotland and left Gordon Brown fuming.

Stuart MacLennan, 24, a rising star of the Scottish Labour Party who was standing in the Moray constituency, shut down his account on the microblogging site early this morning after The Scottish Sun reported that he had branded the elderly “coffin-dodgers”.

He had also labelled the Commons Speaker John Bercow a “t**”, David Cameron a “t***” and Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, “a b******”.

Oh dear “coffin dodgers” is not going to get in over 60 vote for Labour.

Nor was his ire limited to the political world. The Sun reported that Mr MacLennan called the X Factor judge Louis Walsh a “c***”, referred to Jedward as “odious little s***s” and wrote: “I f****** hate Paolo Nutini”.

Well he has a point, with those descriptions, but best not to think out loud when you are planning to stand for Parliament.