09:05 on 9th April, this comment appeared in response to my blog post about Labour MEP selections, by a chap called Joseph who also did not leave a valid e-mail address and is hence untraceable:
Hi Jon, Interesting selections from Labour again ….. In the East Midlands Nikki Brookes was originally part of the selecting process (@NickiBrooksx see tweet 16Feb) she must have selected herself!! (original comment is here)
I investigated this issue and, sure enough, there were two tweets from @NickiBrooksx dated 16th February that seemed to show she had sat all day on the selection panel. I linked to those tweets here. I was also even decent enough to try to give Nicki a chance to reply, having tweeted this to her, also on 9th April. That tweet received no reply, nor to the tweet I wrote to Johanna Baxter and Ellie Reeves, NEC members, that you can find here.
Anyway, what has happened this evening? The offending tweets… have been deleted.
Well that was clever, wasn’t it. Because of course I have kept a screenshot to confirm what Nicki Brooks wrote:
Yes, that’s the same Nicki Brooks who is listed as one of Labour’s candidates in East Midlands Region. Someone who was on the selection panel who seems to have selected… herself. And then deleted the tweets. Well done. Ever heard of the Streisand effect, Nicki and East Midlands Region?
[UPDATE: in my haste to get the blog entry out, the last paragraph originally read 'Eastern' and should have read 'East Midlands'. Now corrected!]
[UPDATE 2: following tweets with Sunny Hundal, apparently the blog entry is not clear enough. We know that Nicki Brooks was a member of the selection panel in East Midlands. We know that panel chose her as a candidate. We do not know if she submitted an application to be a MEP prior to the January deadline as all candidates were supposed to do. We do not know what the rationale was for why the panel, that she sat on, chose her.]