The Tory MP who keeps getting hacked

Does Conservative MP Desmond Swayne need to start taking his internet security more seriously?

The hang-’em-and-flog-’em hardline Brexiteer – who once wore blackface to attend a party as James Brown and defended it by saying he “went to some trouble to be as authentic as possible” – attracted a few headlines in 2006 when he was David Cameron’s private secretary and a series of emails between the two were made public.

The emails revealed his nicknames for backbenchers, calling one fellow MP, Roger Gale, “Mr Angry” and another a “mincehead”. Swayne alleged back then he was the victim of “very effective computer hacking”, adding: “I clearly regret any offence that has been given. I will have to use more moderate terms in the future.”

Now eyebrows have been raised after the 69-year-old’s X account reposted a photo of a shirtless man with admirable abs in what appears to be a shower cubicle.

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Can you believe it, Swain has been hacked again! “Unfortunately, my X account got hacked earlier and the hackers decided to repost something very bizarre,” he wrote after the picture went viral. “Needless to say I was disgusted by what they reposted and passwords were changed immediately. Thank you everyone who highlighted this so rapidly.”

The latest security breach has echoes of former England cricketer turned Swain’s parliamentary colleague Ian Botham – a lesser-spotted peer who has not spoken in the House of Lords for more than five years – whose Twitter page posted a picture of a man’s genitals in 2014, with the caption “what are you thinking?”

The image – just short of a good length, in cricket parlance – came about as a result of a hacking, Beefy insisted at the time. The Brexiteer all-rounder wrote: “For those of you on Twitter who may have seen a distasteful photo from my account yesterday, let me assure you it was the result of someone hacking into it. I’ve played a few jokes in my time, but this was pathetic.”

At the time, Botham said he had enlisted the help of technical experts to see how such an unfortunate incident could be averted in the future. Perhaps he could offer Swain a tip?