Keir Starmer faces a police investigation into his lockdown curry, after repeatedly demanding Boris Johnson should quit for breaching rules in similar circumstances. MailOnline has more.
The Labour leader is at risk of being engulfed by the so-called ‘Beergate’ row after Durham Police dramatically declared it will probe “significant new information” about the gathering.
The force initially decided Sir Keir did not breach Covid rules when he and party aides had drinks and a takeaway in April 2021, when millions of Britons were banned from mixing indoors in most circumstances. But following intense pressure and a series of revelations – including that up to 30 people attended and shared £200 worth of food – the position has shifted.
Sir Keir maintained a stony silence as journalists threw questions about the situation on a visit to Carlisle this afternoon. Labour said the party was “happy to answer any questions there are and we remain clear that no rules were broken”.
However, there is frustration among Tories that the decision was only taken after the local elections – when the PM’s own fine over the Partygate scandal damaged his support.
The development could raise serious doubts over Sir Keir’s future, as he trenchantly argued that Mr Johnson should resign when he was found to have broken the law.
Sir Keir had been filmed drinking a bottle of lager with colleagues at the event at the offices of Durham MP Mary Foy in the run-up to last year’s local elections – and has been wriggling when asked about the incident all week.
Sadiq Khan risked inflaming the row earlier this week by admitting there was “equivalence” between Keir Starmer’s actions and the PM’s birthday gathering in the Cabinet Room in June 2020 – which has seen him and Chancellor Rishi Sunak fined. Mr. Khan suggested the main difference was that the Labour leader only broke lockdown once.
Tory MP Richard Holden, backed by several ministers, wrote to Durham Constabulary insisting there was now “incontrovertible” evidence Labour had “lied” about the events of a year ago, including there now disproved claim that the deputy leader Angela Rayner was not there.
A spokesman for Durham Constabulary said:
Earlier this year, Durham Constabulary carried out an assessment as to whether COVID-19 regulations had been breached at a gathering in Durham City on April 30th 2021. At that time, it was concluded that no offence had been established and therefore no further action would be taken. Following the receipt of significant new information over recent days, Durham Constabulary has reviewed that position and now, following the conclusion of the pre-election period, we can confirm that an investigation into potential breaches of COVID-19 regulations relating to this gathering is now being conducted.
As with Partygate, for sceptics the criticism is not that Starmer and others were having a gathering, which sceptics think should never have been illegal. It’s that they were attending one while supporting the very restrictions that made most such gatherings against the law. Boris’s offence was made worse by being the writer of the rules. For Starmer, it is his repeated calls for restrictions to be tougher and longer that aggravates his (alleged) offence. In all cases, it exposes that these political leaders did not fear the virus that they were telling the country to cower in their homes and make huge sacrifices to avoid catching or passing on. The same politicians who stoked the fear and clamour for restrictions are now being eaten by the monster of public indignation and grief that they created. Will they learn? Somehow I doubt it.
Worth reading in full.
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So if you don’t like the mRNA vaccines you have “general vaccine scepticism”? What kind of sceptics website is this? mRNA treatments have nothing to do with any vaccines I’ve had. They are a form of gene therapy.
This is what comes of just quoting an MSM article verbatim, rather than doing any sceptical journalism.
The European hesitancy and precautionary principle means that their countries will be in totalitarian lockdown for years to come. It will never be safe enough to do anything for a great many people. Somebody might catch a bad cold.
Let’s hope Britain doesn’t follow them down that path. The problem with the success of flu vaccinations is that very few younger people have ever had the full fortnight of flu or anything else really serious and have no idea how bad it feels – or how it feels to recover from such an illness.
Which makes Covid, at two or three times as bad as a nasty flu, very scary indeed, particularly when people are filming themselves looking like they are at death’s door on day 10 – just before they start to get better.
“Covid, at two or three times as bad as a nasty flu,”
That’s true of the fatality overall, but for most people under 65, flu is two or three times as bad as Covid, given the differences in the shapes of the fatality curves. The risk of death from Covid if you are under 65 is something like 5 in 10,000.
As for the precautionary principle being adopted by some of the European nations’ drug regulators – I’d like to see a bit more of that here. Seems to me they are doing the job the UK MHRA should be doing – protecting their public against hastily introduced pharmaceutical products which are starting to exhibit alarming symptoms of causing injuries and deaths in young, healthy people.
Of course it would be nice to see them investigating the Pfizer vaccine as rigourously as the AZ one, but I am sure that time will come.
A bit surprised that this document is not highlighted.You have to be very careful just quoting MSM and indeed any verbal communication from EMA as circulated.If you check this written report it is now a safety signal,The whole discussion is about a specific syndrome now very suspect,which has also got a namne VIPIT(Vaccine induced protrombin immune thrombocytopenia).As the article says nothig to do with common thrombosis now peddling around by MSM.How common is this? Nobody knows but in Norway 1 in 15000 vaccine doses had this syndrome and died.Norway will decide today but please report on ATL also on published document that this is not a wild scare from antivaxxer but being “upgraded” even by EMA as a safety signal.
https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/news/covid-19-vaccine-astrazeneca-update-ongoing-evaluation-blood-clot-casesCOVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca – Update on ongoing evaluation of blood clot cases
“The review of thromboembolic events with COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca is being carried out in the context of as afety signal under an accelerated timetable. A safety signal is information on a new or incompletely documented adverse event that is potentially caused by a medicine such as a vaccine and that warrants further investigation.”