Skip to main content
On Air Now
Exclusive

Labour veteran with broken wrist reveals she won 'tug of war' with hooded man attempting to steal her phone

Share

Dame Rosie Winterton
Dame Rosie Winterton. Picture: Alamy

By Aggie Chambre

A Labour veteran with a broken wrist won a “tug of war” with a hooded man on a bike who tried to steal her phone outside a London hospital, LBC can reveal.

Listen to this article

Loading audio...

Baroness Winterton, a former Labour MP and Deputy Speaker of the Commons, was leaving St Thomas' Hospital around 11pm in a sling when she almost became a victim of crime in the capital.

But LBC understands that even in her injured state, she refused to give up her phone.

She described the incident as a “brief tussle" and credited her mobile phone lanyard with her success in keeping her belongings.

Read more: ‘Labour Isn’t Working’: Badenoch channels famous 1970s election poster to mock 'caretaker' Starmer during PMQs

The man who tried to snatch her phone eventually gave up and cycled off.

A Labour MP told LBC: "I would expect nothing less from Rosie - she’s a tough cookie and a true icon!"

Figures show two in every phone thefts across Europe happen in the UK, as county line gangs turn to snatching phones instead of dealing drugs.

Gaining the title of 'leading country for missing devices in Europe', Britain has seen phone theft claims quadruple since June 2021.

Data suggests London epicentre of the phone theft epidemic, with one in every six phones nabbed across the continent happening in the capital.

These alarming statistics, provided by the American insurance firm SquareTrade, found that Brits accounted for 39% of all phone loss claims