Thread by @IonathanRex

THREAD: Full explanation and analysis of the David Lammy letter situation as it currently stands.

Yesterday (Thursday July 11th), Labour MP David Lammy claimed to have received this abusive letter and naturally posted it straight to Twitter. (1/14)

A search found that he made a similar claim last year, receiving a card with a chimp on the front and a message inside. The handwriting of both the 2018 card's message and yesterday's letter are the same. mirror.co.uk/news/politics/… (2/14)

For comparison, here are instances of the same words and entire phrases in both letters, demonstrating that they were written by the same hand. The Ts and Gs are especially distinctive. (3/14)

Both yesterday's letter and the 2018 card sharing entire phrases and themes also demonstrate shared authorship. Lammy claimed in 2018 that he passed that card on to police; evidently if the same person is composing this week's letter, the culprit was not discovered. (4/14)

Lammy made no mention yesterday of the 2018 card or its obvious shared authorship with Thursday's letter, even though he would surely have to remember last year's card; even if he receives such hate mail regularly, that was one that made the news. (5/14)

Examples of Lammy's own handwriting are quite rare, but after a tip from @PoisonBadwolf I found this picture from 2005. @KingTerry1985 also found this second example from a letter penned by Lammy, where the handwriting is much neater but has possible similarities (6/14)

While the hate mail is all caps and these examples are mostly lower case, there is enough for us to say there is a strong possibility that Lammy himself wrote them. Most telling is the unique slant on the Ts. (image from The Acadamic Agent on YouTube) (7/14)

This excellent video by The Academic Agent, which I hadn't seen at the time of my tweets yesterday (indicating multiple people have investigated this and drawn the same conclusion independently) uses the 2005 example and compares the handwriting. (8/14)

Both yesterday's letter and the 2018 card came at times of political expediency when it comes to distracting from bad news for Labour. This week's was the morning after BBC Panorama aired on the subject of Labour antisemitism, giving them major negative media coverage. (9/14)

The 2018 card came at a time of both public Labour awkwardness regarding the Venezuela situation and the height of the Ken Livingstone controversy (Livingstone would in fact resign from the party later that same day). (10/14)

If David Lammy did indeed fake these letters to himself, this is serious misconduct. Lammy said both yesterday and in 2018 that they'd been passed to police, and also claimed that receiving such letters was a 'depressingly familiar routine'. (11/14)

As well as wasting police time with lies, faking these letters would be a hate crime hoax. It would be an attempt to both demonise the opposing side as, at the very least, containing actively abusive racists, and may inflame racial tensions and division. (12/14)

That Lammy's two publicised examples would both be by his own hand also makes his claim of receiving hate mail being a 'depressingly familiar routine' an obvious lie, and a case of crying wolf to perpetuate a victimisation narrative. (13/14)

If David Lammy has perpetrated this hoax, he is deceitful, reckless, mendacious and stupid. He would be unfit to continue as a politician and should have to face the consequences of these disgusting actions. (14/14)

Addendum!

@jatroa noticed that 'bollocks' in yesterday's letter lapses into lower case. The 'll' is similar to the 2005 handwriting sample, lacking tails as per his unjoined-up style. (The differing slope in the second picture is I think just due to the angle of the photo.)

Addendum 2: Lammy speaks!

Lammy's tweeted a picture of @DVATW's tweet from Thursday, which quote-tweeted my original tweet on the subject. This #LammyGate thread and its more detailed content have not been addressed.

https://twitter.com/DavidLammy/status/1150068284492001281

Addendum 3!

I've written a new thread following on from recent developments: 13 Questions for David Lammy

https://twitter.com/IonathanRex/status/1150138396188323843