He’s Sir Shameless!

Now Starmer claims that he never thought Corbyn would make it to No10

KEIR Starmer has claimed he never believed Jeremy Corbyn would be prime minister, despite tirelessly campaigning for years to put him in No 10.

The Labour leader, 61, who served in Mr Corbyn’s shadow cabinet from 2016 until 2020, has insisted he only did so out of a ‘responsibility’ to thwart Boris Johnson’s Brexit plans.

As shadow secretary of state for exiting the EU, he felt he had to ‘play a full part’ in what was going to happen next with Brussels.

But in an ITV documentary which aired last night, Sir Keir said he did not think Labour was ‘in a position to win the last election’, despite coming close in 2017.

‘I didn’t, obviously, vote for Jeremy Corbyn in 2015 or 2016. On the contrary,

‘Sir Keir is trying to erase history’

I resigned [as shadow immigration minister, in protest of the leadership],’ he said. ‘I thought that once the 2016 Brexit referendum had happened, what then followed in the next few years was going to be felt for generations. And that it was my responsibility to play a full part in that.’

During the 2019 election campaign, Sir Keir said Mr Corbyn ‘would make a great prime minister’, and upon winning the Labour leadership, called him ‘a friend as well as a colleague’.

Rebecca Long-Bailey, who served in the shadow cabinet with Sir Keir, said: ‘All of us were campaigning to win. As far as I saw on the ground, Keir was campaigning as hard as the rest of us.’

Jack Lopresti, deputy Tory party chairman, said: ‘Same old Starmer, he’ll say or do anything when the politics suit him. Sir Keir is trying to erase history, but the public has long memories and won’t forget that he wanted Corbyn in No 10.

‘Starmer can’t make the difficult decisions this country needs if he can’t even be honest about his own past.’

The Labour leader has made an effort to distance himself from his predecessor. In April he denied he was ever a friend of Mr Corbyn. He told LBC: ‘I worked with him as a colleague. I haven’t spoken to him now for two-and-a-half years.’

Sir Keir has ruled out Mr Corbyn campaigning under a Labour banner, meaning the Islington North MP will have to stand against Labour at the next election if he wants to remain in Parliament.

Tory chairman Richard Holden said: ‘It’s extraordinary that Sir Keir campaigned twice to put Jeremy Corbyn, a man who called terrorist groups “friends”, into 10 Downing Street, just so he could force a second Brexit referendum.’

EVERY man and his dog could see that a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour Party would be unfit to govern Britain.

He was an anti-Semite, an IRA supporter, a Kremlin sympathiser and championed ruinous Marxist economic policies.

Yet Sir Keir Starmer stayed loyal, cheerfully sat on his front bench and even said he would ‘make a great prime minister’.

Today, with his eye firmly on No 10 – and as party leader – he has changed his tune.

In a documentary last night, he claimed he never thought Corbyn would be PM. So why tirelessly campaign for him? He also insists, outrageously, that he only stayed in his shadow cabinet out of ‘responsibility’.

This illustrates Starmer’s hypocrisy. If he’ll betray the man he called a ‘friend’, won’t he betray the public if he wins power?