Starmer refuses to apologise for having beer in office
Labour leader accuses Tories of trying to drag him ‘into the gutter’ after claims that he is a hypocrite
SIR KEIR STARMER has refused to apologise for drinking beer with colleagues during lockdown, after he was accused of being hypocrite.
The Labour leader has faced questions after a photograph emerged of him drinking beer in the constituency office of another MP in Durham while on the campaign trail in April last year.
In the same month, two parties were held at Downing Street, which are now being investigated by an official civil service inquiry. Downing Street has apologised to Buckingham Palace over the parties, which were held the night before the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral.
The Prime Minister has also apologised to the country for attending a May garden party, which is also under investigation, and said it should not have gone ahead.
But facing questions about his dinner and drinks with Labour staff in Mary Foy’s office the previous month, Sir Keir said it was a “million miles away” from the lockdown parties in Downing Street, and that staff had worked before and after the meal. He said: “The picture of me was in a constituency office up in the North East, it was I think, three or four days before the May elections, so we were really busy. We were working in the office and we stopped for a takeaway, and then we carried on working.
“There was no breach of the rules. There was no party. And there was absolutely no comparison with the Prime Minister.”
He added: “I understand what’s going on here, which is exactly what happened with Owen Paterson.
“There comes a time when the Tories try to take everyone into the gutter with them. We did nothing wrong.”
But the LBC caller who asked about the incident dismissed Sir Keir’s response as “like listening to Boris Johnson without the harrumphing”.
Nadhim Zahawi, the Education Secretary, called for an apology over the beer-drinking incident. He told BBC Breakfast: “People expect very high standards from their leaders, and I think that’s only right.”
Michael Fabricant, another Tory MP, said Sir Keir’s event was more dangerous than the No 10 garden party because it took place inside. “If the Prime Minister
can apologise for a secure Downing Street garden event, it is a bit graceless of Keir Starmer not to profusely apologise for an event in an office that was not guarded and could have been a real Covid spreader,” he said.
The inquiry into parties in Whitehall during the pandemic, chaired by Sue Gray, the former propriety and ethics chief, will not assess Sir Keir’s dinner since it applies to government events.
The Labour leader was asked whether he would prefer to fight a damaged Mr Johnson at the next election, rather than Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss – the frontrunners to succeed the Prime Minister. Sir Keir said: “I will take on whoever is leading, I don’t really care.
“I think that it’s in the national interest that Boris Johnson goes now. Put party politics to one side, he’s lost all authority and that matters, whatever party you are in.
“We’re still in the pandemic and it’s very important that people behave in the way that we need them to behave, but he has lost the authority to ask people to do so.”
On other domestic and foreign issues, Sir Keir said the Prime Minister was “too weak to lead” and Britain was “paralysed” as a result.
‘There was no breach of the rules. There was no party. There was absolutely no comparison with the Prime Minister’
Wherever you live in Britain, the Covid restrictions that have blighted our lives over the past two years have not been as straightforward as our political leaders have claimed. Who can be in your bubble? How many people can you meet outside? Can we meet anyone socially indoors? It didn’t help that the rules tended to change from week to week. A short attention span was as likely as any philosophical stand against mask-wearing to land you with a fine.
So perhaps people will be indulgent towards Sir Keir Starmer, who was pictured having drinks with staff in a Labour MP’S constituency office, at a time when indoor socialising was banned. Unlike the Prime Minister, he was not responsible for drafting the rules that he is accused of breaking. The reported behaviour was not on the same scale as that alleged in Downing Street. There is no evidence of wine trips to a supermarket near the Labour HQ, or of parties on the eve of Prince Philip’s funeral.
Still, in failing to apologise for the incident – and claiming that “we did nothing wrong” – Starmer has stumbled badly. Perhaps he was not in breach of the rules as they stood at the time – that, despite the beer in his hand, he and his colleagues had indeed stopped briefly to eat before carrying on working (indoor mixing was allowed for work reasons). But because of the perfectly self-righteous attitude Labour has adopted towards any and all breaking of the rules, the incident leaves him open to that most damaging of accusations: hypocrisy.
In his response to Partygate, Starmer, ably assisted by his new front bench, has been responsible for framing a narrative that will accept no possibility of bending, let alone breaking, the rules. If Labour hadn’t pushed the “one rule for them, another for the rest of us” line so vociferously in the context of No 10, maybe it would be easier to accept the notion that the allegations levelled against him should be dismissed out of hand.
Moreover, Labour has put itself firmly on the side of those who have argued that lockdown wasn’t merely a necessary evil, but morally right and impossible to question. In order to highlight the PM’S alleged perfidy, for instance, the party has broadcast examples of sacrifices made by ordinary citizens. The most egregious was a statement by an NHS nurse called Jenny, who boasted that she had refused a desperate husband access to his dying wife. “He begged, wept, shouted to be let in, but we said no… She died unexpectedly and alone.”
Labour shared this on social media as condemnation of Johnson, too disconnected from the reality of ordinary people’s lives to understand that it was actually a condemnation of jobsworth health workers. Still Starmer refused to call for a relaxation of the restrictions that had allowed too many to wield unjust power over the lives of vulnerable people. And when it came to an evening inside a colleague’s constituency office, he had a drink and a laugh. He must be grateful that nurse Jenny wasn’t nearby.
Starmer doesn’t need to resign, but he does need to apologise. If he’s going to trade on his public prosecutor reputation, he should admit that there exists an element of reasonable doubt about what was going on that evening. Or has he adopted a form of papal infallibility where everything he says and does must not only be above criticism but be pure in mind and spirit?
Nobody is going to believe that.