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| Labour's Emily Thornberry quits over tweet | Labour's Emily Thornberry quits over tweet |
| (34 minutes later) | |
| Labour's Emily Thornberry has resigned from the Labour front bench over a tweet she sent during the Rochester and Strood by-election campaign. | |
| The shadow attorney general previously apologised for the tweet, which showed a terraced house with three England flags, and a white van parked outside. | The shadow attorney general previously apologised for the tweet, which showed a terraced house with three England flags, and a white van parked outside. |
| Alongside the picture, she wrote: "Image from Rochester". | Alongside the picture, she wrote: "Image from Rochester". |
| She said she had not meant to cause offence, but Labour backbencher John Mann accused her of "snobbery". | |
| Polls have closed in the by-election, which was triggered when Conservative MP Mark Reckless defected to the UK Independence Party and resigned his seat to seek re-election for UKIP. | |
| 'Respecting voters' | |
| BBC political correspondent Ross Hawkins said the problem was that the tweet suggested Ms Thornberry, the MP for Islington South and Finsbury, thought the house and flags were "something to be sneered at". | |
| He added: "It is not the sort of news that you need to have on a polling day, in a by-election, when you're trying to fight back against some pretty tough press." | |
| Ms Thornberry is believed to have had two conversations with Labour leader Ed Miliband since posting the tweet. | |
| A Labour source said in the second conversation she said she thought the right thing to do was to resign and Mr Miliband agreed. | |
| Emily Thornberry | |
| The 54-year-old entered Parliament as MP for Islington South and Finsbury in 2005 and served as shadow energy and health spokeswoman before taking the role of shadow attorney general in 2011. | |
| The daughter of a former assistant secretary general of the United Nations, she was born in Surrey and was called to the bar in 1983, specialising in criminal law. | |
| She had a majority of 3,569 over the Liberal Democrat candidate at the 2010 general election. | |
| Polls close in Rochester and Strood | |
| Rochester and Strood: What's at stake? | |
| How unusual is Rochester and Strood? | |
| In a statement released by the Labour Party, Ms Thornberry said: "Earlier today I sent a tweet which has caused offence to some people. | |
| "That was never my intention and I have apologised. | |
| "However I will not let anything distract from Labour's chance to win the coming general election. | |
| "I have therefore tonight told Ed Miliband I will resign from the shadow cabinet." | |
| Earlier, UKIP leader Nigel Farage tweeted: "What is Labour's Emily Thornberry trying to imply about Rochester and Strood? I suspect she's let Miliband's mask slip." | |
| Conservative Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said: "We should have pride in flying the Cross of St George - don't knock the national flag of England." | |
| Before the announcement of her resignation, Labour's Chris Bryant told the BBC: "The first rule of politics is respect the voters, this clearly failed on every level." | |
| Mr Mann said it was "out of touch" and "embarrassing". |