Keir Starmer has gambled his career on being cleared over Beergate by making an extraordinary vow to quit if he is fined by police – with Angela Rayner also promising to do the same. MailOnline has the story.
The Labour leader gave a statement after spending hours hunkered down with aides trying to decide how to handle the mounting crisis over the boozy curry event in April last year.
He insisted he is “absolutely clear” no rules were broken and he believes in “honour and integrity” – saying he is “very different” from Boris Johnson.
Sir Keir said he had self-isolated six times, and obeyed the rules when his father-in-law was ill, suggesting even his opponents did not really believe he would have breached them in Durham.
“If the police decide to issue me with a FPN I would of course do the right thing and step down,’ he said – although pushed by journalists he declined to say what he would do if police merely rebuke him publicly.
Angela Rayner echoed his stance, saying in a statement: “If I were issued with a fine, I would do the decent thing and step down.”
The intervention – which raised the prospect of Labour being left without either of its two top politicians – came after a day of building tension, which saw Sir Keir cancel a think-tank event where he would have been grilled by journalists and ignored questions as he left his London home this morning.
He has agreed with senior figures urging him to get on the front foot by committing to resign should Durham Police find he broke Covid rules.
The strategy is high-risk but could potentially leave Sir Keir in a strong position if police do not issue a penalty – while allies suspect he would need to go anyway were he to receive a fine. It also means he will have more leverage in clashes with Mr. Johnson after the Queen’s Speech tomorrow.
He must be hoping the officer in charge of the case isn’t a Tory.
Worth reading in full.
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It puzzles me that a lawyer and former Director of Public Prosecutions really does not know whether he has broken any rules or not. At the very least he should be shouting that the rules were not clearly written! But then he seems to have voted for them…
If a lawyer has no idea about what the rules mean, how can ordinary citizens know? Who writes these rules?
He should never have stood in the first place courtesy of his unprincipled pushing of prosecutions of Julian Assange.
What a ridiculous mess. Starmer supported all the damaging and confusing covid laws, including telling the police to dish out fines with no reference to a court. Now we are in the position of cops effectively deciding who leads the opposition, and perhaps who leads the government. Mad, bad and dangerous.
“He must be hoping the officer in charge of the case isn’t a Tory.”
really?
you had better think that one through….
Honestly, who cares. These politicians are such a bunch of clowns, it really does not matter what starmer does or does not do. Same for all the rest of them. Sack all of them, get in robotic AI, that can make sound decisions. It is obvious humans cannot.
Is he being advised by Blair. Durham Police are Labour supporters. He knows they won’t ‘find’ anything. Politics is a game of deceit and corruption. Starmer should never have stood for leadership in the first place if he had an ounce of decency in him. The Labour Party should never have endorsed him if they had any honesty about them.
Oh In that case I do hope they fine him.
He’s probably already been told what’ll happen and feels safe.
But what if it is a double con/bluff.
He’s been told what will happen, feels safe, makes his announcement.
What if someone gets cold feet and cannot follow through with the promise of no FPN?
Many a slip twixt cup and lip.
A totally irrelevant promise, they’ve already been tipped the wink by the woodentops that they won’t be charged. Did anybody think that these 2 muppets have any principles?
With respect to the last paragraph above, it’s might not be a “high risk” if he’s made a back handed deal with the Met? You never know with people like that.
Coward…as well as a gobshyte…
Keir Starmer should resign for endlessly demanding ever tougher and longer lockdown.
He should be sentenced to life imprisonment in Michael Moore’s underpants.
lets hope the investigation is not already complete and this is just a high and mighty gesture after knowing the result.
Wouldn’t surprise me.
He seems a bit on the overly confident side about his “gamble”
Quit, you c^nt.
“Certainty about someone’s faults and motivations is no different from the unwavering certainty of Lockdown zealots.”
I’m not sure exactly which comments you are referring to, but one thing I’ve always felt sets my position apart from the lockdown zealots’ position is that while I think I am right, and so do they, I am not proposing to lock them in their homes or take their businesses away or force them to wear things that restrict their breathing, stop them travelling or force them to take experimental medical treatments. They are free do believe whatever nonsense they wish to, as long as they don’t impose it on me.
Hardly a rational argument.. just a collection of standard comments from the sceptics’ toolkit.
You have presented no arguments whatsoever because there are no rational arguments for lockdown.
“if we think we hold the moral high ground”
But we clearly do.
The idea that our opponents are well-meaning people uninfluenced by either carrots or sticks who just keep on making mistakes is laughable.
What makes you think you hold the moral high ground?
Easy, he doesn’t demand man be sacrificed, as an end in itself, unlike the Branch Covidian doomsday cult.
There is nothing open minded about these “SCEPTICS” .
They are just doggedly opposed to the mainstream narrative/facts/opinion, on any subject.
You are doggedly for Communism
That’s an interesting question?
How did you draw that conclusion?
It wasn’t a question, it was a statement of fact.
Lockdown is communist, it is a policy imported from a communist dictatorship that has concentration camps.
I drew the conclusion from elementary observation of reality.
I expect there are people who go on protests and ‘demos’ simply because that’s something they do as a way of life. A day out in London meeting like-minded ‘sheep’ waving placards and shouting slogans gives them a massive dopamine hit from all that virtue-signalling in front of their mates.
They then return home with a glow, kidding themselves with the belief that they have “at least tried to do something” yet knowing that, in reality, they have achieved nothing, and the rest of the country has carried on with their daily routine oblivious to the fact that there was even a protest.
tree really showed up on this one, didn’t it?!
I was hoping it’d appear on the Sweden thread and some of the “vaccines are useless” threads the other day but perhaps even it realised it would have been in for a heavy defeat.
Whatever happens, this is gravy for us. I love how the covidians are squirming.
To pre-empt frivolous and vexatious questions from tree, I think more or less every MP and most of the rest of the establishment should be barred from holding public office for life for perpetrating the biggest fraud and stupidity in UK peacetime history.
That’s nowhere near enough punishment.
The damage done to us over the last 2 and a bit years is so great that, at the very least, the Cabinet deserve to be executed.
Well I would be surprised and disappointed if criminal offences were not found to have been committed, but it will never come to that. I’d be happy with banishment, humiliation and a general recognition of the magnitude of what they had done. My great great grandchildren might read about that in history books.
It will never come to any kind of punishment.
Tony Blair is still alive and rich.
Indeed, nothing in any of our lifetimes.
I’m not sure he’s actually alive. He kind of looks sepulchral.
Ghoulish
And Knighted.
Was it you who claimed the moral high ground?
Splinter, progeny of Tree.
All the “establishment” committed fraud.. Really?
What a silly statement. No wonder this tiny band cannot persuade people of their arguments.
FO, tree.
Well argued.
The next stage of this will be to compare the Met and Durham for their approach to Rishi and Kier. Probably at a Judicial Review.
This could run on
And you think Durham will be keen to be found wanting, compared to Met, by letting Starmer off the hook???
Hes not very good at Logic is he?
“Self isolated 6 times”
Fully vaxxed with the quackcine.
Fervent lockdown true believer etc
Are you trying to say something meaningful?
Well, Nessimmersion, I made a similar point the other day and no one seemed to get that he could still have been jabbed with nothing more than saline. Please don’t try to tell me that someone who fits TPTB class got the real thing – I just won’t believe it.
Lots of politicos announced that they were “self-isolating” because of ‘covid’ when they wanted to dodge a media scrum for a lengthy period until a kerfuffle had died down and they had the perfect excuse to do so because of the virtue signalling by declaring they were self-isolating AND they could produce a positive PCR test to prove it because the tests are fraudulent to begin with and can be made to prove whatever you want them to prove.
The fact that the 6 times self-isolation might prove the jabs that he seemed to be so keen on were worthless is neither here nor there really.
😉
😂
doesn’t he look a strong and capable leader 🤣
You stick with the Buffoon.
No!!!! and it looks like someone has sprayed a can of hairspray over that perfectly arranged hairdo to keep it in place after the plastic protect no one from nothing visor was pulled over his face.
Utterly pathetic.
What a mong.
I am interested to know why the fixed penalty notice is the decider. It is quite possible to be adjudged to have broken the rules but to waive the penalty (I suspect Starmer has an inside line on the Durham plod deciding retrospective fines are inappropriate.
Given that Starmer is a legal man you would think guilt was an important factor and that the penalty is secondary, after all in a court the jury decides on guilt or innocence but the judge applies the penalty.
If the Police don’t give Starmer a fine, the Common Law Constables of the Guardians300 can give him one.
Then the Alpha Male Assemble can kick his pizza box in.
Such a shame.
his could have made for an interesting discussion.
However I had to abandon it after it had been hi-jacked by Tree – who isn’t interested in any kind of real consideration of the issues; s/he just wants to chip away at the debate to restore ‘the narrative’. Every time.
I wouldn’t worry about it. Everyone just laughs at tree. He’s a plank, well, almost…….
Not sure I understand your objection to Tree’s original comment.
Is it not the case that this could be a really clever move by Starmer?
The fact that most on here seem to hate him isn’t a factor.
Either you put it together now and connect with those around you or you don’t. I’m just saying that the cost of remaining unconnected is growing.
It won’t be suit a versus suit b in a few weeks time. It will be how the hell do I stay alive for the next two weeks. Believe me the whole political class will seem like a distant memory.
He won’t get fined so a non story. Just more BS for the MSM to froth about to the plebs.
He really isn’t important his trilateral connections don’t mean a great deal. It does mean that there is a complete vacuum where the Labour party used to be. As to what comes next I fear that it will not be conducted in such a civilised way. Do it while you can, attempt to create some sense of unity in the country because we will need that when things become nasty
He used to be DPP. If anyone has got an inside track into who is going to be charged it will be him and his ec-mates there….
yep – he has deffo put feelers out – indirectly of course – nothing that can be traced back to him, can’t be too careful and all that.
Keir Starmer Pledges to Quit if Fined By Police Over Beergate.
Perhaps I’m over dramatising.
With a career in the legal profession I think he must know whichever way it goes, he loses.
If Starmer receives a fine then resigns, would this not leave Boris in a moral predicament?
Morality has yet to trouble Boris.
Just ask him about the morality of his approach to Julian Assange….that has about as much morality as paedophilia.
He’s had an inside tip that he’ll be OK. County Durham – Old Labour territory with a history of corruption. It would be droll if he’d said “Clear me but not Angela.” But he’s a shyster by trade so that would presumably be par for the course.
Can’t possibly have two labour politicians facing resignation, so neither will be fined.
Why not have 22 facing resignation? If you include the Mayor of London….
She should be fined for her fringe. Criminal.