To Liverpool, where all the wit and wisdom of Sir Keir’s Labour party is gathered. Starmer’s army has come to the city armed with bright ideas and insightful opinions — and no one more so than Bell Ribeiro-Addy.
The Labour MP for Clapham and Brixton Hill has been thinking long and hard about the woes her party has faced this last week — cronyism accusations, a freebie fiasco and anti-Sue Gray leaks, to name but a few — and has come up with a solution. To help Starmer better handle press scrutiny, Ribeiro-Addy has suggested the Prime Minister should consider, er, regulating the press. If you want to deal with a problem properly, go to the source, eh?
Speaking at a fringe event today, the left-winger told her audience:
It’s in the Labour Party’s interest and in the Labour movement’s long term interest to regulate the media properly instead of making short term pacts and truces — and if it’s done right media reform could actually make Keir Starmer’s job a lot easier, and effective media reforms would make effective government much easier.
Crikey. Anymore brainwaves like this and Ribeiro-Addy might find herself on the cusp of a good idea.
Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013 — which would force publications to pay legal fees in defamation cases for both sides — was sidelined by the Tories but there are fears that Starmer’s lefty lot could resurrect the idea in some form. Starmer has so far amassed a number of negative headlines after it emerged last week that the PM had received the most donations of any sitting MP — including a stay in a luxury penthouse and thousands of pounds worth of clothing.
The freebie fiasco has rather taken a shine off of Sir Keir’s first Labour conference as Prime Minister — and it seems that instead of tackle the issues at hand, some of his backbenchers would rather cover them up altogether…
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