Sir Keir Starmer today denied being a Covid hypocrite over his Beergate row as the Labor leader appeared on daytime TV’s Loose Women,
In a grilling over his boozy curry in Durham last year, Sir Keir insisted again he had not broken Coronavirus rules.
Police are currently investigating of a lockdown breach in relation to the Friday night gathering in April 2021.
Sir Keir was pictured sipping a beer as he shared a takeaway with colleagues at what Labor have repeatedly insisted was a ‘work event’.
The Labor leader has made a major gamble on his political future by promising to quit as head of his party, should he be fined by Durham Police for breaking Covid rules.
He today told Loose Women how he had ‘put everything on the line’ by pledging to resign if he receives a Fixed Penalty Notice.
Sir Keir described how he knew ‘in my heart’ he had to make his resignation vow once the police probe was announced.
And he again sought to draw a difference between his own reason of lockdown-breaking and Boris Johnson’s Partygate scandal.
The Prime Minister last month batted away calls to resign from Opposition parties and some Tory MPs after he was slapped with a police fine over his 56th birthday bash in Number 10 in June 2020.
Sir Keir Starmer today told Loose Women how he had ‘put everything on the line’ by pledging to resign if he receives a Fixed Penalty Notice
The Labor leader was pictured sipping a beer as he shared a takeaway with colleagues in April last year at what Labor have repeatedly insisted was a ‘work event’
‘I have said that if the police do issue a fixed-penalty notice I will do the right thing and I will step down’, the Labor leader told the ITV programme.
‘I have put everything on the line because I think that that is the right thing to do.
‘That is the complete opposite to the Prime Minister.’
Sir Keir was quizzed on why he had not already resigned over the Durham Police investigation, when he had previously called for the PM to resign for being subject to a police probe.
The Labor leader insisted the announcement of the Metropolitan Police’s Operation Hillman investigation into Number 10 lockdown breaches had been a ‘completely different situation’.
‘By then we already knew that there was industrial scale rule-breaking in Downing Street,’ the Labor leader said.
‘We had had so many examples, including the example of the wheelbarrow of booze coming in, the suitcases coming in, on the eve of Prince Philip’s funeral, so it was a completely different situation.’
A recent poll revealed that almost two-thirds of voters (63 per cent) think that Sir Keir is a hypocrite for attacking the PM for breaching Covid rules when he may have committed a similar infringement himself.
The Redfield and Wilton Strategies survey for the Sun on Sunday also found more than half (56 per cent) thought Sir Keir definitely or probably did break lockdown rules over the Durham curry.
And 61 per cent said if the Labor leader does quit over Beergate, then Mr Johnson must go too.
Sir Keir said he was ‘sure’ that police would find he didn’t break Covid restrictions.
Told that it was not up to him to decide whether he had broken the rules or not, the Labor leader replied: ‘I know that.
‘But my instinct, as soon as I knew that Durham (police) had decided they were going to reopen its investigation, in my heart I knew what I was going to say, which is: “If I’m wrong and they’ve found I have broken the law then I’ll do the right thing and step down”.
He added: ‘I hope that isn’t going to happen, I don’t think it is going to happen.
‘But I’m trying to make the bigger point here because there are about who did what when. But there is a bigger picture, which is trust in politics.’
Sir Keir claimed his pledge to resign was motivated by an attempt to maintain ‘honour and integrity’ in British politics.
He said: ‘The number of times I hear: “You’re all the same, you won’t do the right thing”.
‘I think trust is everything in politics. I have put everything on the line for that honor and that integrity because I don’t believe all politicians are the same.
‘It is important we don’t sink into this where everybody thinks all politicians are the same, because then people lose trust in democracy and think: “Why should I vote if you’re all the same?”
‘This is actually not just about these particular for me. It is actually about who I am as a politician.
‘I came into politics later in life having done other things, I came in to make a difference, and I want to show that we’re not all the same.’
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