Rapid action needed on online hate, say Angela Rayner and Sadiq Khan

Speaking at a Labour conference fringe event in Liverpool, Khan, the mayor of London, said analysis had uncovered 230,000 racist tweets about him sent since he took the role in 2016, and that barely any were removed.

Both said the government needed to push ahead with the online harms bill, which was delayed from the summer and could be heavily redrafted under Liz Truss.

Rayner told the audience that such was the abuse she faced that she almost never read online comments or tweets, generally only doing so if her staff found one that was potentially criminal and she needed to read it to give police a victim impact statement.

Khan said his office had reported 100 of the most offensive tweets about him to Twitter, with only four taken down.

Both politicians condemned some political opponents and parts of the traditional media for propagating dangerous myths in the first place.

Khan noted media coverage in the 2016 mayoral election linking him, as a Muslim, to Islamist terrorism, and that his Conservative opponent, Zac Goldsmith, sought to frighten Londoners of Hindu background.