Sir Keir Starmer is riding highs in the polls, topping Boris Johnson as the preferred PM of the people. Sober, studied and serious: after the ups and downs of the past six years, he’s (apparently) looking like an increasingly attractive offering to a weary electorate. But Mr S is somewhat perturbed by the Labour leader’s selective memory when it comes to trading on his legal career.
Starmer served as Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) between 2008 and 2013, having previously spent two decades training as a barrister. In his 2020 bid for the Labour leadership, he made much of his crusading credentials, releasing a video featuring cases he’d worked on for left-leaning causes like the Wapping print workers and poll tax protesters.
And yesterday he again trumpeted his legal credentials in Boris Johnson’s statement on Partygate in the House of Commons. Responding to Tory MPs who claim that Johnson’s fine was akin to a speeding ticket, Starmer retorted: ‘The last Minister who got a speeding ticket, and then lied about it, ended up in prison. I know, because I prosecuted him.’
That response was a reference to former Energy Secretary Chris Huhne who was jailed in early 2013 for eight months after perverting the course of justice. As DPP, Starmer oversaw the case but did not actually face Huhne in court. His claim therefore to be the one who ‘prosecuted’ Huhne assumes a level of responsibility which the Labour leader has not always been keen to adopt when it comes to examining the CPS’s mixed record of prosecutions between 2008 and 2013.
As criminal barrister Anthony Lenaghan points out:
Boris Johnson was heavily criticised by many on the left in February for raising the issue of the CPS’s failure to prosecute Jimmy Savile. The Prime Minister told MPs that Starmer had spent his time as head of the Crown Prosecution Service ‘prosecuting journalists and failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile’. The BBC even described this as a ‘false claim’, despite Johnson’s subsequent clarification that he was referring to Starmer’s ‘responsibility for the organisation as a whole.’
Yet clearly Starmer has now shown a willingness to embrace his record as DPP and make a virtue of it – meaning that questions now ought to be asked about the failures of the CPS under his leadership, as well as those successes. Does Starmer bear responsibility for decisions taken by his subordinates? The (recently-removed) biography on his Doughty Street chambers website seemed to think so: ‘As DPP, Keir was responsible for all criminal prosecutions in England and Wales.’
Labour ought to start preparing its MPs for questions about their leader’s record as DPP, not least because they next time they demand a minister resign for a departmental failing, the Tories will respond with counter-claims about the CPS.
Not so much collective responsibility, perhaps, as selective responsibility instead.
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