Did the Selly Oak MP secretly swear at the parliamentary debate yesterday?

Yesterday evening, Selly Oak’s MP Steve McCabe was caught doing some suspicious nose scratching during Margaret Beckett’s speech in support of air strikes in Syria.

He was caught on camera appearing to swear at his fellow Labor MP, while apparently scratching his nose.

In the live broadcast of the debate in the House of Commons, McCabe is directly behind Margaret Beckett when he starts to scratch then his nose with his middle finger, then splits two fingers around his mouth.

Though Margaret’s speech has gained much media attention in its own right, McCabe’s actions were picked up by several media outlets.

Twitter also went crazy over this and so McCabe defended his actions as an innocent “bad camera angle”.

Cameron Johnson, a third year student at the University of Birmingham said: “I’d like to give the guy the benefit of the doubt and say he was just being foolish but something says to me that’s not the case.

“He’s jokes as long as he’s against bombing Syria.”

In a statement released  on Monday morning Steve McCabe expressed concerns and apprehensions about action in Syria, taking a difference stance to the views expressed by Beckett.

He said: “I hope you can see I’ve been thinking about it very seriously and that whatever way I decide to vote, it won’t be an easy decision.”

In the end, McCabe voted against the air strikes.