MP's 'flippant' Twitter outburst at train passenger

A Labour MP has branded a fellow train passenger a "lager drinking oaf" and suggested he should "have been killed before he could breed".

Kerry McCarthy, MP for Bristol East since 2005, made the comments on the micro-blogging website Twitter.

The man, she said, was playing techno music "out loud" and wearing a T-shirt with an obscene message on it.

Ms McCarthy, Labour's former social media tsar, later said the breeding comments were "obviously flippant".

It is not clear from the MP's tweets where the encounter took place.

She wrote: "Oaf on train drinking lager and playing techno music out loud. Everyone being very British about it and not complaining."

She then described how he was wearing a T-shirt with an offensive message about his sexual prowess, adding: "Should have killed him when we had the chance before he could breed."

In a follow-up tweet, she said her previous comments were "obviously flippant in the context of him boasting about his (unlikely) sexual prowess".

In 2009, Ms McCarthy was appointed Labour's new media campaign co-ordinator - or social media 'tsar' - after being named as the most influential MP on Twitter.

But she was forced to apologise and received a police caution after she revealed the details of a sample of postal votes on Twitter in the run-up to the 2010 election.

She currently has more than 13,000 followers on the micro-blogging website.

Ms McCarthy, first elected to Parliament in 2005, is a spokesman on foreign affairs for the opposition.