The MP (r) was not delighted with Lindsay's suggestion.
Andy McDonald, the Labour MP for Middlesbrough, has reported a solicitor to the police for writing about lynching him, RollOnFriday can reveal.
Andrew Lindsay, the chairman of the legal advisory service Representation UK and the former head of corporate finance at Yorkshire firm Lupton Fawcett, referred to McDonald being "dragged through the streets of Teesside and lynched" in a social media post if he was found to have unfairly attacked Ben Houchen, the Conservative mayor of Tees Valley.
McDonald previously used parliamentary privilege to level accusations of corruption at Houchen in relation to the acquisition of the huge Teesworks development site, which the MP told the house was sold to private developers “for a mere £1 an acre plus inflation".
Outside of parliament he said the deal “doesn’t pass the smell test”, but stopped short of repeating the allegations.
Houchen responded by calling the MP a “liar and a coward”, and said the investigation by an independent panel would “show there is no corruption [or] illegality”.
Lindsay weighed in to defend Houchen on LinkedIn, where he said the mayor “has done more for Teesside than any politician. Ever”.
The lawyer continued, “If it turns out the enquiry concludes ‘there’s nothing to be seen here,’ and in the meantime some investment and jobs are lost, local Labour MP, Andy McDonald, (who has refused to repeat his allegations outside of Parliament) should be dragged through the streets of Teesside and lynched”.
McDonald, who used to be a senior solicitor at trade union specialists Thompsons Solicitors, told ROF the allusion to his execution was “Quite distressing, and from a fellow lawyer, too”, and that Lindsay "should be ashamed of himself”.
Confirming that he had reported the matter to the police, the MP said, “I wonder how he would feel. My family has to read this. It’s not the first death threat or expression of violence meted out to me, but two of my colleagues have been murdered”.
Labour MP Jo Cox was killed outside her constituency surgery in 2016, while Tory MP David Amess died after being stabbed during a constituency surgery in 2021.
“I’ve had to have people prosecuted for threatening me in the past", said McDonald. "Someone of his vintage and experience ought to think very carefully about making these sorts of statements...By all means disagree with me, but threatening to hang me is beyond the pale”.
Lindsay emphasised that he had only been joking, telling ROF, “I don’t think anyone who read my comment could seriously think that it should be taken literally!”
“It was clearly a metaphor to make the point that Parliamentary privilege is precisely that - namely a ‘privilege,’ which should not be used - (as Andy McDonald appears to have done) as a method of making statements with complete impunity, which might be completely inaccurate and potentially actionable”, he said.
“If the MP seriously thought that some grave misdemeanour had been perpetrated, he should have been prepared to make it publicly”, Lindsay said.
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No one should be threatened with being dragged through the streets and lynched. Anyone who doesn’t know about the Teeside story should pick up a copy of Private Eye though!
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See Private Eye for more details
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Pro tip for any aspiring chairman: if you wouldn't say it to someone's face perhaps you should reconsider telling the entire world 🙄
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What’s taken place with the teeside developments is pretty staggering. As someone above has said, read the private eye coverage.
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Can you not just tell us instead…?
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Its amusing when people who clearly have zero or limited training in fighting try to threaten violence against others.
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What an utter waste of police time.
Shake it off, you thin-skinned b*ll-end.
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There’s another legal story here, about how the safeguards around public money were systematically removed and the impact that has had.
So with Teesworks the taxpayer forked out £260m and underwrote a £107m loan. However without any transparency at the time, 90% of the shares suddenly were given to two private developers. So taxpayers pay, but private developers enjoy almost all of the returns.
Things look even more murky at the airport, where an artificial corporate structure has been used to avoid transparency obligations and large sums have been put in.
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Things look even more murky at the airport, where an artificial corporate structure has been used to avoid transparency obligations and large sums have been put in.
also a bunch of airport business tenancies/concessions were granted to close friends of Ben Houchen, the local mayor and de facto one of the controlling arms of the local authority development corporation
all very incestuous
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ShootyOriginal - it's not about the MP being "thin skinned"; it's about idiotic members of the public taking these comments literally (hence references to Jo Cox and David Amess). The only "b*ll-end" here is you, you fearless keyboard warrior...
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The two private developers then promptly sold all the scrap metal on site and paid themselves an enormous dividend and sub contracts have apparently been dished out to family members.
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What most people don’t know about is the marriage.
It’s tucked away at page 2 of the Private Eye article “Tees Freeport Special Report: the Regeneration Game” which former MP, Anna Turley helpfully tweeted in full on 7 September 2022.
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This is a Solicitor who thinks he is important and deserves respect. He is as bad as many of his clients. Saying be dragged through the streets of Teesside and lynched is dangerous. Look at the current riots in France.
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The NAO ought to be investigating. Anything less won’t clear up the concerns
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The NAO is just the star of what is needed!
Bring in the CIA or we'll never get to the bottom of it. Public lynchings are a very real problem in 2023 Britain and it's imperative that we take this extremely seriously.
The next thing we know people will be calling their opponents scum at party conferences and the whole nation will descend into anarchy, turpitude and sin.
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If there has been corruption then the Monitoring Officer has difficult questions to answer, as does Ben Houchen.
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Don't believe most of the comments are genuine. A LinkedIn comment saying a crooked MP should be lynched if he has committed crimes is clearly tongue in cheek and metaphorical, and for anyone to pretend that he is advocating for violence or some mentally ill loon would take him up on it, is not being honest and is also a dangerous North Korean state wannabe in shutting down anything they don't like.
Any police investigation will yield precisely sweet fa, and it just goes to show that the MP was acting out of spite and anger having got his knickers in a twist.
As an aside, maybe if they had both taken some finasteride and minoxidil, they wouldn't be so bitter and bald and would care less about politics.
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One wonders why this isn't reported to the SRA? Solicitor dodging trainfares get struck off, a solicitor calling for violence and encouraging a lynching surely needs to be looked into?
It's one thing to be an old slab of sentient ham and sticking by your Tory mayor, who might well be a pillar of the community. By all means, go red in the face and shout how much you detest the Labour MP.
But a call for violence is beyond the pale... and McDonald MP is white. Imagine he was black - the lynch call would then get a racial note on top of it.
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When Is Ocado Getting Here... are you ShootyOriginal's love child ?
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"A LinkedIn comment saying a crooked MP should be lynched if he has committed crimes is clearly tongue in cheek and metaphorical"
No no no, this is clearly extremely serious and a firm line needs to be taken against it.
Anything else endangers democracy and will see jackbooted stormtroopers of the far-right parading down our streets before the summer is out.
Now, if you'll excuse me I'm off to watch the remainder of this Stormzy performance in which he has come on stage wearing a bullet proof vest and holding a prosthetic replica of Boris Johnson's severed head. Which is all fine and dandy in the name of artistic expression and doesn't need to trouble us because I'm a goodie and understand this is all just satire and a jolly jape when my tribe does it.
But will somebody please send in the police already to put a stop this outrageous matter before those dreadful Northerners and Conservatives start building a gallows in Hull's city centre.
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When Labour get elected there will be a proper investigation. I’d say heads will roll but someone will take me literally.
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Would help if half-arsed commentators could actually spell “Teesside”.
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