Khan: I won’t run if Sir Beer Korma quits
LONDON mayor Sadiq Khan has denied he plans to run for the Labour leadership if Sir Keir Starmer resigns over ‘Beergate’.
Mr Khan insisted he had no ambitions to lead the party and praised Sir Keir’s ‘integrity’ for vowing to resign if he is fined for breaking lockdown laws.
His comments on the BBC’s Sunday Morning programme came as details of Durham Constabulary’s criminal investigation into ‘Beergate’ emerged.
The force is following stricter guidelines on Covid rule breaches that mean retrospective Fixed Penalty Notices are likely.
It has also sent out ‘incredibly comprehensive’ questionnaires to Sir Keir and his deputy Angela Rayner over the gathering in Durham’s Miners Hall on April 30 last year, at which Sir Keir was pictured swigging from a bottle.
They include questions about a football shirt presented to the Labour leader when he was supposed to be working, as the Mail revealed last month. Sir Keir insists he did not break lockdown laws and was working.
Meanwhile, Sir Keir’s culture spokesman Lucy Powell has claimed Labour is the true party of patriotism – even though her leader once used to call for the abolition of the monarchy.
Writing in The Observer, she insisted: ‘It’s not the Conservative Party which enshrines these patriotic principles but Labour.’