“He is Mr Rules” were the immortal words of a Labour briefing line issued in 2022 when Keir Starmer was last accused of breaking lockdown rules. How hollow those words seem today. During the ‘Beergate’ scandal, Starmer began by completely denying he had done anything wrong. The matter was first raised in detail on this website – and eventually, the BBC, The Times and even The Guardian caught up. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander…
The Durham incident ultimately was investigated by the police. It emerged during this period that Labour had spun a web of (at best) half-truths, inconsistencies and omissions. Starmer made a moral stand: he declared he would resign as Labour leader if he had broken Covid rules. Luckily for him, Durham Police dropped the investigation, letting him off the hook, and never pronounced a verdict on whether his beer and curry was actually a rule breach. There was speculation that Durham Constabulary took a much more liberal approach than the Met to these matters, and that he would have been fined had Beergate taken place in London. Starmer’s meeting with his voice coach took place in the Met’s jurisdiction…
Starmer finds himself in difficulty after The Sunday Times – inadvertently- revealed that he had met his voice coach in person at Labour HQ on Christmas Eve 2020. This was during strict Tier 4 restrictions in London (actual law, not guidance) – a much more strict set of restrictions than those in force during Beergate. Families had just been told they could essentially not see any relatives over Christmas. The atmosphere in Christmas 2020 was pre ‘partygate’ – it was one of the worst periods of restrictions of liberty in the capital. The only feasible defence for Starmer in the regulations is to claim that it was reasonably necessary for his voice coach to be present physically at a work meeting. Absolutely no one will believe that, especially given Mssrs Pogrund and Maguire recount previous sessions being delivered via phone call. The partygate scandal itself broke a year after gatherings had been mentioned as a throwaway lines in an old Times piece – that went on to sink Tory Prime Ministers…
Labour’s line this morning is: “The rules were followed.” Sound familiar?
Speaking on Times Radio, former Home Secretary David Blunkett spoke about overdiagnosis of mental problems:
“Let’s distinguish those who are really severely mentally ill, diagnosed with things that require prolonged medical and diagnostic treatment. My wife and I talk about this a lot, because she’s a retired GP, about the fact that you can be sad without being ill. You can be momentarily depressed because your boyfriend or girlfriend’s just thrown you and you’re not mentally ill. You can even have mild issues, which can be dealt with with the right kind of support, but it doesn’t make you mentally ill. So we’ve got a real task, I think, to get the psychology, if you like, of this over. But there are things where you definitely need medical intervention, and there are other things where you need good friends, you need good connectivity, and you need a job.”