The Mail and Mail on Sunday have been serialising an updated version of Lord Ashcroft’s Starmer biography Red Flag before it is released tomorrow, splashing over the weekend on reports that Starmer “spent years in a relationship” with “pro-trans judge” Maya Sikand. A name familiar to co-conspirators…
Guido noted in June of last year:
“Starmer’s former position on whether men can have cervixes or women can have penises might be the accepted wisdom in his leftie North London legal circles – to voters however it is confusing and repellant. Perhaps he is nowadays less close to, as well as less influenced by his old friend and fellow KC Maya Sikand, with whom he shared Chambers. She was involved with the Trans Working Rights Group and may have been a bad influence on Starmer when it comes to sex and gender issues.”
The book runs quotes from contemporaries who allege that Sikand had a “relationship” with Starmer “after she took a pupillage at his Doughty Street chambers in 1998“:
The unauthorised biography also has testimony from sources who claim the pair saw each other “for years.” The sources note that both of them contributed to a textbook – Blackstone’s Criminal Practice – which was published in 2008, after Keir married his now-wife Victoria. The Times has also followed reporting of the claims…
Guido led the way in first naming Sikand. Tom Baldwin’s hagiography of Starmer, (which, hilariously, Ashcroft says was written after Starmer gave up on writing his own autobiography in the Spring of 2023), curiously contains no reference to Sikand whatsoever despite making reference to the PM’s past girlfriends. The Lobby – obsessively fascinated by the personal lives of past Tory prime ministers – has so far acted remarkably incuriously when it comes to Mr Rules…
In Henry Mance’s piece today for the FT, lunching with Nigel Farage:
“Splendido!” Farage says, when the drinks arrive; I suppose it’s a step to European reconciliation. We clink glasses, and he lights the first of two back-to-back Benson & Hedges. A few minutes later, we’re back downstairs. “Are you drinking? Good.” He orders a glass of Sauvignon blanc for each of us — not a bottle, “because it’s Lent” — followed by a bottle of claret, to have with our meal. They say Farage drinks less than he used to. They say a lot of things.”