Emily Thornberry has apologised after she was spotted driving at 81mph on the motorway - thanks to her own Instagram account.
The Shadow Attorney General shared a ‘story’ of herself on the way to the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, taken from the back seat while she sat behind the wheel.
But in a gaffe she failed to realise that the digital speedometer was reading 81 in the image - above the motorway speed limit of 70mph.
A spokesman for the Labour frontbencher said: “Emily is well aware that the speed limits are set where they are for a reason.
“She has apologised unreservedly for this fleeting and totally unwitting moment when she exceeded them while on her drive to Liverpool."
A source close to Ms Thornberry suggested she had been accelerating to overtake and her speed quickly dropped back down below 80mph.
The minimum penalty for speeding is a £100 fine and three points on the offender’s driving licence.
The Shadow Cabinet minister, whose husband is a High Court judge, said at Labour conference: “When it comes to out-of-control individuals who consider themselves above the law, the biggest problem facing our country is not the criminals on the street or in the boardroom, but this current Tory government.
“From Rwanda and Northern Ireland to Covid contracts and workers’ rights, this is a government which treats the law not as a guardrail to keep it on the straight and narrow, but a barrier to be torn down whenever it gets in their way.”
Ms Thornberry has previously told of her love of the party scene at the Labour conference, saying: “I love conference… I have conference friends who I never meet at any other time of the year.
“I probably met them 30 years ago and I knew their name then - I don’t know what their name is now.”
She told Politico’s Westminster Insider podcast: “[Once] my dress was completely soaked with beer and [I was] going off to the loo and standing under the hand dryer, and the back of my hair was sticking up.
“And somebody came up and tried to get a selfie with me. Oh God - only at Labour Party conference.”
