Keir Starmer’s big party election broadcast featuring Gary Neville has just dropped on ITV. It is due to be repeated on BBC One. As Neville and Starmer climb through the Lake District, Starmer says:
“Politics is about service. I’ve worked in the police force in Northern Ireland. I’ve run the Crown Prosecution Service. And I’ve changed the Labour Party to put it back into the service of working people. That’s what I’ll do with our country”.
The only issue is that Starmer didn’t “work in the police force in Northern Ireland”. He was a part time advisor to the NI policing board, which is and was not part of the police force there. In fact, the whole point is that the board is independent of the police force. Starmer is making it look like he was a frontline officer, when actually he was a human rights advisor to a separate organisation which has nothing to do with front line policing…
It’s an interesting and revealing slip up from Sir Keir. PEBs are tightly regulated. Will be interesting to see how this lands…
Former leader of the SNP in Westminster Ian Blackford told Times Radio why he believes Nicola Sturgeon’s claim that she spent no time in the kitchen and therefore didn’t see any of her husband’s purchases:
“She doesn’t have a passion for cooking.”