Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer faced mounting pressure on Sunday over a potentially rule-breaking dinner with his colleagues during the CCP virus lockdowns after a leaked memo suggested the dinner was prearranged.
Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab accused Starmer of “complete hypocrisy” while Liberal Democrats leader Sir Ed Davey suggested it would be “difficult” for Starmer to continue as the party leader if police decide that he has broken the law.
But Labour maintained that no rules had been broken. A shadow cabinet minister said she’s “absolutely confident” that Starmer didn’t break the law and rejected that the so-called “beergate” affair “in any way equates” the “partygate” gatherings in Downing Street and the Cabinet Office.
Starmer previously said the team was working late on an election campaign and had to order takeaway before resuming work as restaurants were closed.
“At some point, this was in the evening, everybody’s hungry and then that takeaway was ordered” and “brought in and at various points people went through the kitchen, got a plate, had some food to eat, and got on with their work,” the Labour leader told ”Good Morning Britain” on Wednesday.
Asked if Starmer should quit, Raab told Sky News on Sunday, “It’s the rank double standards that drive people crazy.”
The Conservative minister said Starmer “needs to fess up and answer all of the holes in the account that he gave for that beer-and-curry event in Durham.”
“Keir Starmer looks like, I’m afraid, someone who is engaged in complete hypocrisy, complete double standards, and I don’t think he is going to get past that until he gives a proper account of what happened in Durham,” he added.
The leader of the Lib Dems told the BBC’s “Sunday Morning” that no politician is above the law.
“So if any politician, be it Keir Starmer, [Prime Minister] Boris Johnson, if they get a fixed-penalty notice after a police investigation, it’s extremely difficult for them to continue,” Davey said.
Both Starmer and Davey have repeatedly called on Johnson to resign over partygate.
A spokesperson for Starmer’s office said the Labour leader “was working, a takeaway was made available in the kitchen, and he ate between work demands. No rules were broken.”
Shadow secretary of state for levelling up, housing, and communities Lisa Nandy said she’s “absolutely confident” that Starmer didn’t break the law.
“He went on a work visit, he stopped to eat at various times during the day as was factored into the work visit, and then he finished the work visit and he went back to his hotel,“ Nandy said of Starmer in an interview with Sky News, before accusing the Conservatives of ”an absolutely desperate attempt to sling mud.”
Asked if Starmer should resign if he is found to have broken the law, Nandy said she’s “absolutely confident that he hasn’t broken the law.”
“This is a guy who’s self-isolated six times during the pandemic, I don’t know a single other person who did that. He is Mr. Rules, he does not not break the rules, he was the director of public prosecutions, not somebody who goes around tearing up rules when it suits him, in stark contrast to the prime minister,” she said.
Durham Constabulary cleared Starmer and his team in February but said on Wednesday that it was reconsidering the case after receiving “a number of recent communications.”
