The politician appeared on the ITV show this morning to talk about the levels of abuse she’d been getting, which is revealed to have accounted for half of all abuse received by MPs.
Susanna, 46, could be heard gasping after Diane, 63, repeated some of the horrendous abuse including a racial slur and a swear word.
The presenter asked her: “I think whatever anyone thinks of politics, differing political views, the fact that you received almost half of all the abusive tweets sent in the run-up to the general election – 45 per cent – is just completely unacceptable, intolerable.”
Diane explained: “We knew we were getting a lot of the online abuse, but we also knew other MPs spoke about it also. But when we discovered that we were getting half of the abuse…
“When I say abuse, it wasn’t, ‘I don’t agree with you about nationalising the railway’. It was people calling you a n****r b***h, threatening acid attacks, it’s rape, it’s death threats and it’s upsetting for me. But it’s also upsetting for my staff.”
Susanna was clearly stunned as she responded: “Absolutely right and also people listening to those abusive terms will also be upset by them, you’ve received them directly.
“We can’t broadcast them obviously on the programme at this time in the morning. It’s a sign when you hear those terms, it’s unbelievable that you are receiving them so regularly.”
When asked by the broadcaster why so much abuse was getting through, the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington said that it was due to the anonymity given to people online which allowed them to get away with their comments.
Diane went on to say that it wasn’t just social media like Twitter or Facebook but also emails sent to her account, which she had to open in case they were from constituents.
In fact, the abuse was so bad that she received physical letter that contained abuse from people.
The interview comes as Susanna admitted that she had to leave Twitter sometimes after getting online vitriol from people.
She said that she only got a “tiny” amount of it but it would still lead her to quit the site.
Good Morning Britain airs weekdays on ITV at 6am.
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