The Countdown presenter Rachel Riley has told a high court judge that a tweet by an aide of the then Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, seriously harmed her reputation and led to a concerted campaign to get her fired. Riley is suing Laura Murray over the tweet, posted a short time after Corbyn was hit by eggs thrown by a Brexit supporter during a visit to Finsbury Park mosque on 3 March 2019; the attacker was later jailed for 28 days for assault. Shortly after the incident, Riley tweeted a screenshot of a January 2019 tweet by the Guardian columnist Owen Jones about an attack on the former British National party leader Nick Griffin, in which Jones said: “I think sound life advice is, if you don’t want eggs thrown at you, don’t be a Nazi.” She then added “good advice”, along with an emoji of a red rose and an egg. Later that day, Murray tweeted: “Today Jeremy Corbyn went to his local mosque for Visit My Mosque Day, and was attacked by a Brexiteer. Rachel Riley tweets that Corbyn deserves to be violently attacked because he is a Nazi. This woman is as dangerous as she is stupid. Nobody should engage with her. Ever.” In a written statement, Riley said she was being “sarcastic” in her tweet and had not called Corbyn a Nazi. “The response to the defendant’s libel of me was a concerted attack on me and my career,” Riley said. “My career is in the public domain. A concerted campaign was initiated to get me fired from my job, as being someone who had advocated violence.” She told the judge she had received “a great deal of abuse” and that “most of it” was caused by Murray’s tweet. William McCormick QC, defending Murray, told the judge that the manner of Riley’s tweet was “both stupid and dangerous”, adding: “It was obvious that her tweet would provoke hostile reactions of the kind that did in fact emerge. What the defendant tweeted was true, reflected her honestly held opinions and was a responsible exercise of her own rights of expression on a matter of real public importance.” Riley said she had been afraid that the “false allegation” that she had “encouraged a violent attack” had made her a target for reprisals. Mr Justice Nicklin, who is overseeing the trial, had ruled at an earlier hearing that Murray’s tweet was defamatory in common law because the meaning was that Riley “had publicly stated in a tweet that he [Corbyn] deserved to be violently attacked”. He has now been asked to consider whether serious harm was caused to Riley’s reputation and whether Murray, who is contesting the lawsuit, had a “truth”, “honest opinion” or “public interest” defence to the TV presenter’s libel claim. The case continues.