A government minister claims that Boris Johnson is not to blame for a mob ambushing Labour leader Keir Starmer.
It comes as the Prime Minister is facing pressure to publicly apologise for his claim that Keir Starmer failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile during his time as a lawyer.
The widely discredited claim has been accused of leading to Keir Starmer being harassed and ambushed by a mob accusing him of "protecting paedophiles".
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Technology minister Chris Philip states that he does not believe the Prime Minister is responsible for the incident that took place at Westminster on Monday.
“I don’t think you can say that’s why it happened because… the people involved in that fracas have previously done similar things to people like Michael Gove and BBC journalist Nick Watt,” he told Sky News.
“They did mention Jimmy Savile. They also mentioned Julian Assange repeatedly, they mentioned Covid, they also mentioned the opposition more generally.
“I don’t think you can point to what the Prime Minister said as the cause of that. You certainly can’t blame him for the fact that that mob were clearly behaving in a totally unacceptable way.”
Some Labour MPs have claimed that Boris Johnson is employing "smear" tactics as a way of strengthening his own political position.
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Labour MP Dr Rosena Allin-Khan said the Prime Minister is ready to "smear any person or group who stands in his way and benefit only himself".
She told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "This is straight out of the Trumpian playbook and most of us have come into public life to help change lives.
“But Boris Johnson has come into public office to seize power and smear any person or group who stands in his way and benefit only himself.
“There’s no barrel that he won’t scrape.”
Julian Smith, who previously served as Mr Johnson’s Northern Ireland secretary, tweeted on the day of the incident: “What happened to Keir Starmer tonight outside parliament is appalling.
“It is really important for our democracy & for his security that the false Savile slurs made against him are withdrawn in full.”
Senior Tory Sir Roger Gale urged Mr Johnson to make a Commons apology on Tuesday.
Tobias Ellwood, the Conservative MP who chairs the Commons Defence Committee, told the Prime Minister to “apologise please”.
“Let’s stop this drift towards a Trumpian style of politics from becoming the norm,” he added.
Scotland Yard have said two people were arrested on suspicion of assault after a traffic cone was thrown at a police officer during the incident.
But, Mr Phillip is not the only one defending Boris Johnson, Conservative peer Lord Lilley, a former Cabinet minister, said “we’re all getting a bit precious about this”.
“Both sides are saying the person at the top of the organisation is responsible for what happens further down … both sides should probably apologise and stop making personal remarks,” he told BBC Newsnight.
Keir Starmer apologised while director of public prosecutions in 2013 for the CPS, having failed to bring Savile to justice four years earlier.
But, there is no evidence that Keir Starmer had any personal role in the failure to prosecute the man who was one of Britain’s most egregious sex offenders before his death in 2011.
