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Tory Esther McVey has deleted an untrue claim about EU member states being forced to accept the Euro - after initially defending it on Twitter .

The former Work and Pensions Secretary provoked outrage on Sunday after she tweeted untrue claims made in a 2014 newspaper opinion column as fact.

The original article, published in the Telegraph, claimed all EU member states would be forced to accept the Euro single currency after 2020. There is no evidence that this is the case.

The four-year-old article’s claims were linked to by anti-EU blog BrexitCentral, which was then retweeted by Ms McVey.

She wrote: “Are the public aware of this? And the many other things the EU has planned for its member states after 2020? #trust #watchout”

The tweet came just hours after Ms McVey had tweeted to complain that trust in politicians was at an “all time low”.

After a deluge of replies to her tweet, many asking whether she believed MPs posting bafflingly untrue statements had any bearing on the public’s trust in politics, Ms McVey released another dazzling display of social media point-missing, appearing to suggest facts were something that one could “agree” or “disagree” with.

She wrote: “From reading the comments, even if you don’t agree with the article I posted, I think we can all agree on one thing - we never want the UK to join the Euro. True or false?”

Ms McVey has since deleted the original tweet which included the link to the article.

But savvy social media users took screenshots of it, to secure its place in the history books.