Pics politics self-owns

A gastropub landlady’s rant about a Labour MP who ‘scrolled Instagram, only ordered a starter and left no tip’ was a self-own for the ages – 22 tasty takedowns

Poke Reporter. Updated April 13th, 2026

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There’s a saying in retail that the customer is always right.

In the hospitality world, that can be a little diffcult to swallow if the customer has turned up to your restaurant with some out-of-control under-fives and is ignoring their enthusiatic game of tag, or has claimed to have allergies that required you to change their starter and main, but is happily wolfing down the so-called allergen in their dessert because “it’s more of an intolerance”.

One landlady, Karen Errington, who runs the award-winning Rat Inn in Anick, aired one or two of her grievances against the paying public in an opinion piece in the Morning Advertiser.

In it, she criticised a Labour MP for coming in with a group who ordered starters but no mains, then left without leaving a tip, although, according to reviews on Tripadvisor and Facebook, the Rat Inn includes a service charge on the bill, so – technically – everybody leaves a tip unless they ask for it to be removed.

The Daily Mail spotted the story, and jumped at the chance to have a go at a Labour MP. They also did the detective work, concluding that the person in question was Hexham MP Joe Morris.

A source ‘close to the MP’ told the Mail that Morris’s party had spent more than £150, and admitted to not leaving an additional tip because they presumed (apparently correctly) there would be a service charge

Karen Errington’s gripe didn’t go down too well with other potential punters. Here’s how Twitter responded.

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