Keir Starmer today blasted Boris Johnson for tarring him with an “untrue slur” that he failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile.
The flailing Prime Minister tried to associate Labour ’s leader with the notorious paedophile entertainer in a Commons outburst that was slammed even by his own MPs.
Sir Keir led the Crown Prosecution Service when it decided not to prosecute Savile in 2009 due to insufficient evidence, a decision it later apologised for.
But the Full Fact website investigated in 2020 and found it had never actually been suggested that Sir Keir was personally involved in the decision.
Instead, the CPS said: “The reviewing lawyer at the time set out their own reasons for the decisions they took”.
Despite this, the cornered PM lashed out yesterday, saying: “He spent most of his time prosecuting journalists and failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile, as far as I can make out.”
He also bizarrely insinuated the Labour frontbench was on drugs, without evidence.
Mr Johnson was “strongly advised” not to make the Savile reference according to the Financial Times - which quoted one Tory MP branding it “totally outrageous”.
And today Sir Keir told ITV ’s Good Morning Britain: “It’s a slur, it’s untrue, it’s desperate from the Prime Minister.
“I was really struck yesterday in the House at how many Conservative MPs were disgusted at that untruth from the despatch box.
“Of course on our side, people were disgusted. But his own MPs couldn’t believe their Prime Minister had stooped that low.
“He’s degraded the whole office. And this is how he operates. He drags everybody into the gutter with him.
“Everybody he touches, everybody that comes into contact with him is contaminated by this Prime Minister.”
Justice Secretary Dominic Raab admitted “I can’t substantiate that" - despite trying to brush it off as "the cut and thrust of parliamentary debates and exchanges".
Tory MP Julian Smith said: “The smear made against Keir Starmer relating to Jimmy Saville yesterday is wrong & cannot be defended.
“It should be withdrawn.
“False and baseless personal slurs are dangerous, corrode trust & can't just be accepted as part of the cut & thrust of parliamentary debate.”
But Boris Johnson ultra-loyalist and Cabinet minister Nadine Dorries tried to defend the PM’s claim.
Asked how she could have a PM just repeating fake news she shrugged dramatically and told Channel 4 News: “Well, I have no idea of the background of Keir Starmer.”
Told it was an old meme repeated by conspiracy theorists, she replied: “Well, I think there are lots of things Keir Starmer shouldn’t have said.”
Told Boris Johnson misled the House, she replied: “I don’t think that’s the case.”
Speaker Lindsay Hoyle said the Prime Minister’s comments were not “disorderly”, but warned they would “inflame opinions and generate disregard for the House”.
He added: “I am far from satisfied that the comments in question were appropriate on this occasion.”
Hitting out today, Sir Keir said the PM had made those who followed coronavirus rules feel like mugs.
Sir Keir told BBC Breakfast: “What the last few weeks have caused for so many people is a sort of reliving of some of the dark moments. There has been has been anger, there’s been grief and and there’s been guilt.
“I’ve spoken to so many people who say to me ‘look Keir, I felt guilty that I followed the rules because I should have done this for my dad and I didn’t, I should have done that for my elderly parent and I didn’t because I followed the rules – and now I feel like a mug because the Prime Minister broke the rules and he’s pretending that he didn’t’.
“I think that emotion is very important.
“One of the things I tried to get across yesterday is that members of the public who obey the rules shouldn’t feel guilt.
“They should feel pride at knowing that what they did saved the lives of people that they will probably never meet.”
He went on: “I think the spectacle of the Prime Minister standing at the dispatch box being asked ‘Were you at this party on the 13th of November in your own flat?’ And he says ‘I can’t answer that because of the investigation’…
“He knows very well whether he was in the flat – and he’s taking us for fools.
“I think one of the features of this particular set of circumstances is not only did the Prime Minister and others break the rules, but they’ve taken the country for fools by insulting our intelligence in the cover-up that’s gone on since.”
Asked if Boris Johnson should quit if he is found to have breached coronavirus rules, Dominic Raab said: “Let’s wait and see … Allow the police to conduct their investigation and see, when they have ascertained the facts, quite what they conclude.
“Of course, there will be full transparency around that.”
The police are examining around 300 photographs as part of the investigation into alleged parties.
Mr Raab told Sky News it was a “good question” when asked why there were so many pictures of gatherings which were claimed to be work events.
Asked about his own leadership ambitions, Mr Raab said: “I’m fully supporting this Prime Minister. He will go on, he will win the next election, I’m very confident of that.”
