Labour front bencher Seely Kau today expressed "regret for any offence I may have caused" after tweeting a photograph she had taken of a Rochester UKIP voter's house on which she had spray painted a phallus.
Ms Kau, who lives in a £3 million house but rides a bicycle to work because she wants people to think she supports the environment, denied that she had drawn a phallic symbol on the voter's wall, insisting it was a "happy shark with his mouth closed".
She said that while cycling past the house, she had noticed that there were three union jacks on the walls, so she decided to paint a picture of St George and the Dragon. Except the didn't know how to paint St George and didn't know how to paint a dragon, so she decided to paint a shark instead because that was easy. She happened to have a can of spray paint on the back of her bike and thought she had better use it up before the paint went bad.
She accepted that some people might confuse her shark for a phallus and that her stunt could be misinterpreted as public school snobbery, so she was resigning from the shadow cabinet. She added that she expected to be re-appointed to the shadow cabinet next week, "when all the hoo-ha has died down".
