Politicians are not all the same... they’re not all as cunning as this
Oh for a politician who says “Yes, I did break lockdown rules, but I’m not going to resign because they were stupid!” Alas, the Cavalier spirit is dead; this is the age of the Puritan, which means public virtue masks private vice. Ergo Keir Starmer – Goody Starmer, the vicar of Holborn – was forced to appear on television to explain, after weeks of saying Boris must go for eating cake, the circumstances under which he will resign for being caught eating a curry.
It was tawdry. The decor was wrong – two massive Union Jacks, like he was launching a ship – and the handpicked jury of three broadcasters looked perplexed.
I don’t want people to think politicians are all the same, said Goody Starmer, the sort of thing politicians say all the time: “No law was broken … I simply had something to eat.” (To be fair, we’ve all done it.) But if the police do conclude that the moment the rice passed his lips, he was breaking the 48th commandment of the Book of Covid, the vicar will resign.
If Durham Constabulary issue a fine, that is. He wouldn’t commit to quitting if he just gets a slap on the wrist.
He’s right: not all politicians are as cunning as this. For though this was dressed up as a display of “honesty” and “integrity”, it was actually a rational gamble. Sir Keir’s lawyers have, no doubt, told him that he didn’t break the rules, so pledging to quit if the investigation turns sour isn’t nearly as courageous as it looks – and when Boris Johnson is hit with yet another fine, Goody can lean across the Dispatch Box, point the finger of God at his Tory countenance and say: “I was willing to resign, why aren’t you?!”
The only problem is that Goody Starmer, in his desperation to set the bar for resignation as low as possible, earlier set a trap for himself. Beth Rigby – the Sky News political editor who, one suspects, in a past life got her kicks out of ducking witches – referred him to a tweet from Jan 31 in which he said that the Prime Minister “needs to do the decent thing and resign”, not for being found guilty but simply for being under “criminal investigation”.
“Isn’t it rather hypocritical,” asked Beth, “that you said that of him, but you’re not prepared to resign right now?”
By Starmer’s fanatical logic, he certainly should – that he won’t go suggests, to play with a phrase, that it’s “one rule for Keir and another rule for his opponents”.
Where is all this madness going to end? Perhaps a South African-style truth and reconciliation process, at which politicians admit, in tears, that at the height of lockdown they did truck with the Devil and share a flap-jack with Sue from accounts.
It’s all so unnecessary. Covid was a nightmare; most of us would like to forget it and move on. Even Sky News, realising that watching Starmer is like watching paint lie – allegedly! – cut to a helicopter above Labour headquarters, reminding the viewer that the weather is lovely at the moment, and there are better things to do.