The writing’s on the wall.
Politicians have developed something of a reputation for denying things they have said at some point in the past, but it’s hard to do so when the evidence is literally staring everyone in the face.
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox appeared on Sky with Sophie Ridge on Sunday, where he was expressing his belief that a failure to secure a Brexit deal with the European Union would be a bad move for the United Kingdom.
During the course of the conversation, Ridge brought up a tweet posted by Fox last year in which he said that the United Kingdom was “one of the few countries in the European Union that does not need to bury its history”.
Obviously unaware of the fact that a screenshot of the tweet appeared on a giant screen behind him, Fox denied sending it at all, suggesting that, while he did make the comments in a speech late in 2015, that they were taken out of context and tweeted by The Guardian.
Liam Fox denies sending controversial tweet while sitting in front of a giant picture of it. pic.twitter.com/TARGC0qLgu
— Angry Scotland (@AngryScotland) March 12, 2017
In an attempt to clarify the comments, Fox explained that what he meant was that “Britain has always felt less emotionally attached to the European Union because in our history we had never felt the need to bury the 20th Century in a pan-European project”.
Fox did indeed say the words in that context in a speech to the Scottish Conservative conference, but he himself had neglected to provide context in a tweet sent in March 2016, a tweet that it still visible on his account.
"The United Kingdom, is one of the few countries in the European Union that does not need to bury its 20th century history" #scc16
— Liam Fox MP (@LiamFox) March 4, 2016
Fox continued to deny sending the tweet despite the fact that it was available in plain sight to everyone watching and would have been to Fox too had he just glanced a little to his left.
To be fair, he’s not the first person to have old tweets come back to haunt him and he probably won’t be the last.
