EMILY PRESCOTT: Susanna Reid and ex-Tory MP locked in row over slip-up

EMILY PRESCOTT: Good Morning Britain presenter Susanna Reid and ex-Tory MP locked in row over VIP sex ring slip-up

Good Morning Britain presenter Susanna Reid is caught up in an extraordinary row with former Tory MP Harvey Proctor – and it may take an expert in linguistics to resolve it.

The pair are at loggerheads over a comment made by Susanna on the ITV breakfast show about new Labour peer Tom Watson.

He, infamously, supported what turned out to be entirely false claims by a fantasist about an alleged paedophile ring at Westminster – of which Mr Proctor was wrongly accused of being part.

Susanna, 52, was interviewing Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer on the show about Watson’s controversial recent appointment to the Lords when she said that Watson was ‘wrapped up mistakenly with what’s now known as the witch-hunt against VIPs’.

Word puzzle: Good Morning Britain presenter Susanna Reid is caught up in an extraordinary row with former Tory MP Harvey Proctor – and it may take an expert in linguistics to resolve it

MP: The pair are at loggerheads over a comment made by Susanna on the ITV breakfast show about new Labour peer Tom Watson

But Mr Proctor, 75, tells me he has complained it is a ‘lie’ to say that Watson was ‘mistakenly’ dragged into the police investigation.

Watson has said it was for police to determine the truth of the allegations and he merely encouraged alleged victims to report their stories, but an official report found his interventions ‘created further pressure’ on detectives.

Mr Proctor has already called on Watson, 55, to apologise to him for promoting the allegations, and now says that every Monday he will tweet the email complaint he sent to ITV, alongside a rolling count of the number of days he says the programme has misled viewers, until the comment is corrected.

Mr Proctor – whose home on the Duke of Rutland’s Belvoir Castle estate was searched in 2015 as part of the police investigation, called Operation Midland – tells me that Good Morning Britain bosses have so far ‘skirted around’ the issue.

Allegations: He, infamously, supported what turned out to be entirely false claims by a fantasist about an alleged paedophile ring at Westminster – of which Mr Proctor was wrongly accused of being part

He says: ‘They have replied mainly talking about the interview, not so much about Susanna misleading her viewers about Tom Watson’s involvement in Operation Midland.’

A programme spokesman says: ‘Good Morning Britain wrote to Mr Proctor and explained that Susanna’s reference to ‘mistakenly’ was intended to highlight that there was no evidence for the accusations against Mr Proctor. She also clearly referred to the ‘witch-hunt against VIPs’.’

Mr Proctor says he would like to go on the show to set the record straight but thinks ITV would ‘run a mile from that’.

In the meantime, stand by for his weekly tweets…

Source: Read Full Article