Sir Keir Starmer has sown the wind – and now he reaps the whirlwind. The Labour leader has led the charge on Partygate these past six months, releasing endless statements, clips and quotes castigating Boris Johnson for the gatherings in No. 10 during Covid. But today Durham Police have announced they will investigate an alleged lockdown breach by Sir Keir, who was photographed drinking and eating a curry during the ‘Beergate’ incident of April 2021. Steerpike thought it would be timely to look back at just some of the recent occasions when the Labour leader moralised about ‘Partygate’…
19 January – Amid fresh reports of more new parties, Starmer demands Johnson’s resignation in the House of Commons at PMQs. His grounds for this are the Prime Minister changing his justification for what went on during Downing Street in 2020 and 2021. He says in the Commons:
Last year, we were told by the Prime Minister that there were no Downing Street parties. Then it turned out that there were parties, but we were assured that no rules were broken. Last week, we heard that rules may have been broken, but that he thought it was a work event. Yesterday, from the man who wrote the rules, we heard, ‘Well, nobody told me what those rules were’… no matter the excuse, there is no excuse for taking the British people for fools. Does the Prime Minister agree that it is now time for him to resign?
Labour has of course changed its own lines on ‘Beergate’ after they were forced to reveal that Angela Rayner was in fact there too.
25 January – After the Metropolitan Police announced an investigation into the Downing Street parties, Starmer claimed that it was grounds for the Prime Minister’s removal for office. He suggested that the mere announcement of the Met probe alone – even though it had not yet found any wrongdoing – was enough for members of the Cabinet to demand Johnson’s departure:
We need to see the report in full and frankly, some of his Cabinet now need to look themselves in the mirror and ask themselves why they’re still supporting this Prime Minister. There’s a Metropolitan Police investigation into the goings on in Downing Street. It’s time that some of those Cabinet members spoke out and said we’re not tolerating this any longer.
The same day, Angela Rayner tweets ‘Boris Johnson’s Downing Street is under police investigation, how on earth can he think he can stay on as Prime Minister?’
31 January – Sir Keir Starmer argues that being under investigation alone is grounds for Boris Johnson’s resignation. He tweets: ‘Honesty and decency matter. After months of denials the Prime Minister is now under criminal investigations for breaking his own lockdown laws. He needs to do the decent thing and resign.’
12 April – After Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak were fined by the Metropolitan Police, Sir Keir Starmer called for both men to resign, even though Sunak was not aware that he was attending a social gathering. Starmer said that the people of the UK made ‘unimaginable, heart-wrenching sacrifices’ during the pandemic and that:
The guilty men are the Prime Minister and the Chancellor. They’ve dishonoured all of that sacrifice, they’ve dishonoured their office. This is the first time in the history of our country that a Prime Minister has been found to be in breach of the law, and then he lied repeatedly to the public about it. Britain deserves better, they have to go.
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