You will always find him in the kitchen at ... ‘work functions’
PEOPLE do tend to congregate in kitchens at parties, but Sir Keir Starmer insists that on the night of ‘Beergate’ he was there only while taking a short break from work.
As our exclusive picture shows, the Labour leader swigged alcohol and chatted with colleagues in a small kitchen with little scope for social distancing.
With a double row of white kitchen cupboards and no obvious seating, the room on the ground floor of Miners Hall – the 100-year-old home of the Durham Miners’ Association – is far from an ideal work environment.
The kitchen is at the end of a long corridor in what was a suite of offices that were being used last year by Durham’s Labour MP Mary Foy. She is understood to have subsequently moved ahead of renovations.
A 43-second video recorded on April 30 last year shows Sir Keir enjoying a bottle of beer by the kitchen window. A second bottle is on the window sill.
He was talking to Ms Foy and a second woman, the back of whose head was visible. There has been speculation that it could be Labour Deputy Leader Angela Rayner after her party last week admitted she had been at Miners Hall that day, contradicting previous denials. Neither Sir Keir, who would have been standing with his back to a kitchen counter, nor Mrs Foy are wearing masks and appear closer than two metres from each other.
At the time, England was in Step 2 of its lockdown roadmap which banned indoor socialising with people not in your support bubble.
Sir Keir has insisted the drinks were ‘perfectly lawful’, adding: ‘I was in a constituency office. We were very busy. We were working.’