Conservative Edmund Limerick switches to Lib Dems

Apologies: First Draft News report that this is a hoax: “we debunked it in one of our emails to our newsrooms partners”. The original tweet with the fake story is preserved below.

In a fillip for the Liberal Democrats on the day of the party’s general election manifesto launch, Conservative Edmund Pery, the 7th Earl of Limerick, has joined the party.

A lawyer and former Foreign Office staffer, who once wrote an election manifesto in poetry form, his switch has been motivated by Brexit:

Note: he is a hereditary peer but has not been elected to be a continuing member of the House of Lords.

The origin of the hoax