Ever since Labour decided to pretend Rishi Sunak doesn’t think child rapists should be prosecuted, Sir Keir’s own record heading the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is back under the microscope. By his own words, this should be fair game: when his team “made mistakes“, Keir “carried the can“. There is at least one member of his own Shadow Cabinet who’s been particularly outspoken on those “mistakes”…

In 2010, Emily Thornberry stood up in the Commons to tear chunks out of the Starmer-led CPS for failing to come to a conclusion on prosecuting the officer who killed Ian Tomlinson at the G20:

“We have all seen the film. The man was clearly assaulted […] How can the CPS have taken 15 months to come to no conclusion? It is not going to take any action. I suggest that that would not have happened if the tables had been turned and this shows that there is no equality before the law.”

Then, in recently unearthed footage from Question Time in 2012, Thornberry again goes after the CPS for “letting down” the victims of Jimmy Savile after failing to act on the evidence. When the Savile drama hit the headlines again last year, Starmer called it “an untrue slur” – yet here’s Thornberry:

“I’m really disappointed in the Crown Prosecution Services for letting down these victims. When evidence comes forward, I’m really shocked that they did not go ahead with prosecuting. It’s for that reason that I wrote in my capacity as Shadow Attorney General to [the] Inspector of the Crown Prosecution Service […] and asked for an independent inspection.”

She also slammed the CPS for investigating itself over the the issue, claiming it was “a bit like the BBC doing an investigation of itself, or the health service doing an investigation of itself, or Broadmoor doing an investigation of itself.” Co-conspirators will recall Thornberry even wrote to Starmer personally, attacking the Service for “backsliding” on “weakened” rape prosecution guidelines.

If Labour are going to continue presenting Starmer as an infallible man of great integrity, they need a better strategy than simply sending out Wes Streeting to defend his boss’s “proud record” as though it is beyond reproach. A record so strong that you can still read Emily Thornberry’s speeches laying into it on her own website. Thornberry now sits a few chairs along from Starmer at the Shadow Cabinet table…