Clip supposedly showing Wes Streeting call Diane Abbott a ‘silly woman’ has been edited

A video that supposedly shows Labour’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting calling Diane Abbott a “silly woman” has been shared on X (formerly Twitter). But the original episode includes no such comment and the “silly woman” audio seems to have been added artificially. 

The clip comes from an episode of the BBC’s Politics Live programme broadcast yesterday (3 June). In the versions being shared on social media, the presenter Jo Coburn refers to a social media post by Ms Abbott, which is shown on the screen, and a voice can be heard saying “silly woman”. 

One account sharing the clip said: “Wes Streeting calls Diane Abbott a ‘silly woman’ on Politics Live. You can clearly hear the microphone pick it up”, while another says: “This man needs to be sacked”. 

But no such remark can be heard in the actual episode on BBC iPlayer [26:30]. Mr Streeting said on X: “A fake video is circulating from Politics Live today. It contains words I did not use. People can check the original footage on iPlayer, but so far it has only fooled the gullible.”

The clip shows part of a discussion about a now-deleted X post from Ms Abbott’s account sharing an Observer article headlined “Starmer on Abbott: ‘I’ve actually got more respect for Diane than she probably realises’” with the caption “more lies from Starmer”. 

After the tweet was shown on Politics Live, Mr Streeting said: “I don’t know if it was Diane that sent that tweet or whether it was someone mistakenly tweeting. The fact it was deleted says quite a lot”. 

Ms Abbott said on 2 June that she intends to stand as a Labour candidate following an internal dispute about whether she would be able to stand for the party at the general election. 

We’ve previously written about many edited clips appearing to show politicians saying or doing things that they haven’t. 

This article was amended on 10 June to correct a misspelling of Ms Abbott's name. We apologise for the error.