Back before Christmas Starmer claimed at PMQs that Boris and Sunak had Covid “convictions.” A falsehood seeing as a Fixed Penalty Notice does not a criminal conviction make, which the former DPP would be expected to know…
Boris made clear that the PM had misled the house, telling Guido the same, and called for him to retract that claim. This has now finally been done, in the quietest way possible, by Starmer’s key ministerial outrider…
Cabinet Office minister Georgia Gould now retracts the claim on Starmer’s behalf in a parliamentary written answer to Richard Holden:
“My Rt Hon Friend the Prime Minister was referring to the Fixed Penalty Notices received by two former Prime Ministers for breaking COVID lockdown rules. The Prime Minister is happy to clarify that a Fixed Penalty Notice does not constitute a criminal conviction. He stands by the relevance of raising to the attention of the House that two former Conservative Prime Ministers were fined by the police for breaking the COVID rules that they put in place for others.”
Under usual form Starmer would have to make this retraction verbally in the Commons, the Tories (whether they back Boris, Rishi or neither) should have asked for it at the time…
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.”