Who knew that being a voice coach qualified for ‘key worker’ status during the pandemic lockdowns? It has been revealed that the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer employed a personal voice coach as a ‘key worker’ during the Covid-19 pandemic, despite strict government guidelines at the time. The rules defined critical workers as those essential to public services – including those on the frontline of health, social care and transport. Nowhere does the official guidance mention the life-saving qualities of voice coaches as worthy exemptions to the lockdown rules. Yet, according to a report in the Times, Starmer appointed Leonie Mellinger, an actress and communications skills specialist, in such a role. Did the then opposition leader breach lockdown rules in doing so? His behaviour would appear to be at odds with his repeated public condemnations of lockdown rules breaches. There is more than a whiff of self-serving political hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy is often more dangerous than lying in politics
What did Mellinger actually do to merit any special privileges? She has spoken publicly about helping a notoriously reticent politician discover his voice and counselling him as he considered resigning in 2021 but her place in Starmer’s inner circle has only now been made public. Mellinger reportedly visited Labour headquarters in a mask on Christmas Eve in 2020, advising Starmer as he considered his response to Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal. At the time, the capital was under the strict Tier 4, ‘stay at home’, restrictions. Was Mellinger’s soothing advice on Starmer’s delivery to autocue really an essential public service? Mellinger was recruited to work for Starmer in 2017, when he was Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow Brexit Secretary. After studying his public speaking and rhetorical style, she came to the conclusion that he struggled to show the public his true personality (it hardly needs a voice specialist to reach such a conclusion but let that pass). Mellinger confides that Starmer was very uncomfortable reading the autocue and it made him ‘close down his personality and become somewhat wooden’. She worked with Starmer to ‘emotionally connect’ with the audience, and to ‘help him have the courage to open up and reveal more of himself’.
The classically trained dramatist, who advised the Prime Minister for five years, is proud of her work. ‘The transformation,’ she said, ‘has been enormous’. Indeed, those who worked with Starmer on his leadership campaign say his triumph would not have been possible without Mellinger, who helped him navigate the path from courtroom to television studio. Really? It is hard to discern any great improvement in the Prime Minister as a public speaker. In truth, he looks and sounds as uncomfortable as ever at the podium delivering a speech. Nor do the set-piece TV interviews which are an inevitable part of the job come naturally to Starmer. He should perhaps ask for a refund.
Starmer is not the first prime minister to have struggled with the public speaking side of the job. Nor is he the first leader to seek specialist help of this kind. Margaret Thatcher sought advice and guidance from the TV producer Gordon Reece on how best to modulate her public image. Thatcher also made a clandestine visit to the home of the actor Sir Laurence Olivier to work on lowering her voice, creating an air of authority and power. It worked to a degree. Yet what Thatcher possessed in spades was political conviction and a distinct ideology. Starmer, so far at least, appears lacking in both. These are qualities and skills that no amount of voice coaching can or will cure.
Starmer is not the first politician to face charges of hypocrisy during the national lockdown periods brought on by the pandemic. The Downing Street lockdown parties scandal ultimately cost Boris Johnson his job. Matt Hancock, the health secretary at the time, broke his own social distancing guidelines while conducting an office affair with an aide. Hypocrisy is often more dangerous than lying in politics, in part because the public finds it hard to forgive or forget. Hypocrisy during the pandemic lockdowns is especially toxic even now – because ordinary voters were left feeling they were stupid enough to follow the rules. Starmer’s ‘key worker’ voice coach is just the latest damaging example of an apparently incurable disease in our nation’s political life. ‘One rule for them; another for us’.
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