The Labour official said: “It started off as fairly innocuous — like ‘oh, sorry, I missed you at this fringe event’ or stuff like that. And I was like, ‘okay, that’s plausible?’ Because I run around all over the place at these things.” The messages soon escalated, with “Charlie” sending an explicit image.
“It was almost like they were actually there,” said the official. “It was like they were able to work out who was at [the] conference and who wasn’t … They made reference to the exhibitors’ area and stuff like that, which aren’t particularly well advertised, even if you’re in the building.”
The messages grew more sinister, with Charlie “almost looking to substantiate gossip on other people,” the official said. Crammed into the bar of Liverpool’s Pullman Hotel, the official went outside and tried to call “Charlie.” To his surprise, the person at the other end picked up.
The pair had a phone call that lasted “three or four minutes,” said the official, who first spoke about his experience to ITV. “I was like, ‘I don’t know who you are. What’s the deal here?’ And basically, they said they’d come up to Scotland for uni, had worked in public affairs for a bit in the Scottish Parliament, then moved back down south.”
There was nothing notable about the person’s voice, other than it sounding “metropolitan” and “generic,” said the official: “It was just sort of stereotypical … It wasn’t flat but it wasn’t high pitched. It was very middle of the road in about every possible way. There was no variation.”
They added: “It almost seems predatory, for want of a better word. Not necessarily sexual, just ‘I’m going to flex my muscles and see how far I can take this thing.’… It makes me feel uneasy.”
