It’s three days since Guido first reported a major admission let slip in Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire’s latest book on Labour: that Starmer had an in person meeting with his personal ‘voice coach’ during Tier 4 lockdown. Now the story is running on every broadcaster and every newspaper (except The Guardian of course)…
There are a few basic questions Starmer must answer if he has any hope of the scandal dying down, including:
- Was the meeting actually a social call rather than a work event? His voice coach was a long-standing family friend…
- If so, was any alcohol consumed during the voice training session?
- If Mellinger was present for work purposes only, how can it be that she was not employed by Labour until the following month (January 2021)?
- Does any invoice or evidence of payment exist for the delivery of the in person voice training session?
- Given that NHS voice therapists were working remotely at the time – and Mellinger promoted her own remote practice – why was the in person meeting necessary?
- Why has Labour now dropped its initial explanation that Mellinger was a ‘key worker’?
- Who was her line manager? Did she have a contract of any kind at the time?
These simply highlight the inconsistent nature of Labour’s explanation of the circumstances. It doesn’t even get into the wider question of Starmer’s own hypocrisy. The very same week he met Mellinger in Labour HQ he was calling for an ever-harder, ever-stricter lockdown. The chief proponent of lockdown, ‘Mr Rules’, has been totally cooked by this latest book…
