An MP has revealed for the first time the “shock and disbelief” she experienced after historic tweets of hers were republished, leading to a social media storm.

Speaking exclusively to the Kent Politics Podcast, Lauren Edwards told how her life and career came under massive stress as she found herself in the international spotlight.

The Labour politician was stunned when posts in which she made seemingly disparaging remarks about Estonians and a homeless person, among others, were retweeted.

She issued an apology which was then shared by Elon Musk - the world’s richest man and owner of Twitter, which is now known as X.

The drama came just a month after the Rochester and Strood MP had been elected and followed social media activity from her on the summer riots.

One resurfaced tweet from 2009 read: “I want these f****** Estonian r*****s out of my flat now!”

At the time, she described the posts as “a significant error of judgment on my part”.

Speaking this week, she told host Simon Finlay how she coped with the scrutiny and what she thinks led to the posts coming to light.

She described the initial realisation: “It was just sort of horror and shock and a sort of disbelief, I think.

“There was a period where I thought ‘have I been hacked’? because the tweets were using language I would never think I would ever have used.”

Ms Edwards explained the context behind the Estonians’ post, saying she was living in a houseshare in her mid-20s with an “inconsiderate” Estonian housemate.

He would invite his friends around late at night and play loud music while she was trying to sleep - the tweet came from frustration at the situation.

She added: “It was a different time when people would use social media almost like a diary.

“It’s not that I have some oddly specific xenophobia towards Estonian people, I was living in a shared house and I had an Estonian flatmate who was bringing people around late at night to basically have a party.

“I was very conscious of having to go to work the next day so I think a sleep-deprived tweet of me saying I wish these Estonians would get out is not about them leaving Britain.

“It’s about me wanting them to leave my house so that I can go to sleep.

“It was a very particular context and some people took it out of that context, and this is the danger of social media which I think people are much more aware now than they were.”

While she maintained she was sorry for the truly offensive tweets, she felt some people had deliberately twisted her words in some of the other ones to make her out to be worse than she truly was.

However, she says she wasn’t concerned if the event had damaged her political career because she was more interested in delivering for her constituency.

“I’m not particularly fussed about my career prospects in terms of climbing the ladder. I’m very happy being a good Labour backbench MP,” she said.

“I can make a huge contribution to really focusing on delivering for my constituents.

“The reality is I’m in a marginal seat and I absolutely have to have all of my focus on making sure in four or five years’ time, people in Rochester and Strood are feeling better, they’re seeing a better health service, they’ve got more money in their pockets.”

The weekly podcast usually brings together Simon Finlay, Robert Boddy and Dan Esson, of the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

Simon covers Kent County Council while Robert reports on Medway Council and Dan specialises in borough and district councils.

You can listen to the podcast at IM Listening, or download it from Apple Podcasts, Spotify and TuneIn – just search for Kent Politics Podcast.

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