Labour councillor claims Northampton MP Andrew Lewer's Twitter blocks are 'childish' and makes him unaccountable

Northampton MP Andrew Lewer has been criticised for blocking people on social media by a leading Labour councillor.

Conservative MP for Northampton South, Mr Lewer has more than 5,000 followers on Twitter.

But Gareth Eales, leader of the West Northamptonshire Council Labour group, hit out at the Tory in a series of tweets, which started at 2am on Saturday morning (February 5) in response to being blocked by Lewer.

Mr Eales claims he is one of a 'huge' number of local people blocked from following the Northampton South member.

A spokesperson for Mr Lewer said they had 'taken a more robust attitude to blocking those who are abusive or vexatious on his social media accounts.'

Councillor Eales labelled the MP's actions 'childish' and added: "Whilst I don’t personally care, the number of people this clown blocks should be pursued as a public interest issue.

“There is a HUGE level of local people Andrew Lewer blocks… that constitutes a removal of accountability. It is a big local issue, tip of the iceberg stuff.

“I know someone blocked for asking Lewer his favourite restaurant on the Welly Road.

“I comment from a position of a former parliamentary candidate — not to be again for clarity. There was a genuine huge number of people who fed back to us that they’d contacted Andrew Lewer via normal methods with no response."

Searches on Twitter revealed 31 users saying they had been blocked by Mr Lewer, including one from Bavaria in Germany.

A spokesman for his office said today (Monday): “Andrew uses Twitter for purely informative reasons. The amount of correspondence by post and email we get is huge and we have to focus on matters that are raised directly by constituents.

“People are welcome to contact him over any issues by telephone, email or post, including their names and address.

“Over recent months, we have taken a more robust attitude to blocking some accounts because of the vexatious atmosphere surrounding some MPs' work.

“But people can still view anything that’s posted on there quite freely via his website. Mr Eales will just have to find someone else to focus his attentions on at 2am on a Saturday night.”

Following Conservative Southend MP Sir David Amess' murder last year, Mr Lewer revealed how death threats and abuse are almost part of daily life for politicians.

At the time, he said: "Previously I have not talked about it much, because I do not want to upset my family, but I get just as much of this stuff as my colleagues do and have had to call the police in to look at threats and abuse on quite a number of occasions now."

Mr Eales believes he was blocked after correcting a tweet by the MP on January 21 regarding a meeting he had with leaders of a local early years centre which Mr Lewer said is in Dallington. The Labour councillor replied saying it is in Spencer.

The Labour councilllor, who represents Dallington Spencer ward on West Northamptonshire Council, tweeted on Saturday he could 'only guess this huge constituency geography error, corrected by me, was my crime.'

Mr Eales stood as the Labour candidate in the 2019 Election when Mr Lewer more than quadrupled the Tory majority to nearly 4,697 by landing 51 percent of the vote.