What do you do when you’re in a hole? Stop digging. Apparently Emily Thornberry didn’t get the memo. The Shadow Attorney General was wheeled out on the Easter Monday media round to defend Labour’s attack advert which claims that Rishi Sunak isn’t tough enough on criminals convicted of child sexual abuse. Thornberry did her best to sound authoritative and lawyerly but came unstuck multiple times during her seven-minute grilling on Radio 4’s Today programme.
After allowing Thornberry to sound off on the importance of overhauling the sentencing guidelines on child sexual abuse, host Justin Webb asked her about Sir Keir Starmer’s own role in drawing them up. As Director of Public Prosecutions, he sat on the Sentencing Council from 2008 to 2013 and was in the meetings at which the present rules were drawn up. Did he ever object to them at the time? The Shadow Attorney General replied, ‘I wasn’t in that meeting and I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ This is despite Mr S reporting four days ago that Starmer sat on the council in 2012 when the current rules were debated. Has Thornberry really not been briefed since then? Has she not read a newspaper since Thursday?
Webb then asked if Thornberry’s party now supports locking up every single adult convicted of sexually assaulting children? He asked, simply: ‘Is Labour building prisons? Is Labour planning to expand the prison estate and pay for it?’ ‘No’ came the reply, followed by a lengthy burble about the importance of the prevention of crime. But what about those people who have committed crime and are now in the post-sentencing stage? What then? Answer came there none. Indeed, Thornberry switched from pledging ‘more community support officers’ to then arguing that ‘you don’t just do it in terms of “slap as many people in prison as possible”.’ More officers to lock less people up? Is that the party line now?
Day five of this row and still party spokesmen at sixes and sevens. Let’s hope Labour has some better answers by the time parliament returns…
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