Frustrated Keir Starmer today slammed Tory ‘mudslinging’ over his lockdown beer, election ‘pacts’, and Angela Rayner.
Labour ’s leader accused Conservatives of “throwing mud around” to distract from their failure to solve the cost of living ahead of Thursday’s local elections.
Today Sir Keir admitted his office made a “mistake” by wrongly claiming his deputy Angela Rayner was not there on the night he had a beer during election campaigning in Durham on 30 April 2021.
But he told Sky News’ Sophy Ridge on Sunday: “We were in the office, we were working, we paused for something to eat. There was no party, no rules were broken, and that is the long and the short of it. Durham Police looked at it and decided there was absolutely nothing wrong.
“We’ve got an election on Thursday and there’s just Tory MPs trying to throw mud around because they’ve got nothing to say on the central issue which is the cost of living.”
Covid laws at the time banned indoor gatherings of different households, but gatherings “reasonably necessary for work” were exempt.
Labour’s leader insisted: “We simply made a mistake, it’s a genuine mistake.
“I don’t think anybody would seriously say Keir Starmer ’s team would lie to the media about this. We made a mistake.” He went on: “From time to time a mistake is made, it was a genuine mistake and I take responsibility for that.”
It came as the Mail on Sunday accused Ms Rayner of being the person who originally told a joke about crossing and uncrossing her legs to distract Boris Johnson at PMQs, like Sharon Stone in the film Basic Instinct.
Ms Rayner had dismissed the original story as “desperate, perverted smears”.
Labour have not denied the Mail’s claim that she made a light-hearted reference to her “ginger g***ler” to MPs on the Commons terrace.
But sources hit back at the Mail’s original framing of the claim - that Ms Rayner was uncrossing her legs as a deliberate ploy. A Labour source said: “The vile suggestion that Angela Rayner initiated the sexist smears that have been made against her must be some kind of sick joke.”
The Daily Mail itself made and earlier public airing of the Basic Instinct claim - with an article by columnist Amanda Platell on January 7, just over two weeks before the podcast.
The article said: "Wearing a chic dress that showed off her thighs, the Labour deputy leader was channelling her inner Sharon Stone. Boris has always had a tendresse for women with basic instincts."
Meanwhile Sir Keir denied claims by Tory chairman Oliver Dowden that Labour was stitching up a local elections “pact” with the Lib Dems that he had “attempted to conceal from the voters”.
Mr Dowden said Labour were standing candidates in 61% of South West seats this Thursday compared to 97% in 2018, while in the North East Lib Dems were standing in 56% of seats, down from 78%.
Labour’s leader insisted: “There’s no pact, everybody knows there’s no pact.” He added: “I think, and I’ll happily have this checked out, that we are standing more Labour candidates at this election than we ever stood.
“I’m recalling a statistic in the back of my mind. But I’m pretty sure we’ve got more candidates out there than we’ve ever put in the field before.”
A Labour source said the party always chose carefully where to put money and resources in areas where there was little chance of winning. Lib Dem leader Ed Davey added: “There’s no pact now, there’s not going to be a pact in the future.”
Labour’s leader fumed: “All we’ve got from the government is mudslinging left, right and centre, whether it’s Angela Rayner, whether it’s Oliver Dowden talking about pacts.
“Why aren’t they talking about the issue that matters - everybody knows people are worried about paying their bills. What’s the government saying about that? Absolutely nothing.”
It came as Tony Blair made a comeback to official Labour campaigning in a party political broadcast 25 years since his 1997 election victory.
The video features Sir Tony praising Sir Keir’s “strength, determination and intelligence”, saying: “he knows a Labour Party true to its principles is a Labour party dedicated to winning power, to change our country again for the better.”
Sir Keir - who said after the 2019 election that Labour should not “oversteer” away from Jeremy Corbyn ’s politics - said the endorsement was “very valuable and further demonstrates the amount of work we’ve done in the last two years, the change that we’ve made.”
He insisted: “I’m not going to hug any previous Labour leader because I don’t believe you go backwards to go forward. I will learn from any Labour leader, I will talk with any Labour leader, because Tony Blair has won three elections.”
