Keir Starmer insisted he will not be going to the World Cup as further claims of human rights abuses in Qatar emerged yesterday.
The Labour chief said none of his colleagues will attend the controversial tournament in the Middle Eastern country, where being gay is illegal.
Asked whether he would go if England reached the final, he told LBC: “No, I wouldn’t. I’d love to but the human rights record is such I wouldn’t go. That would be the position of the party.”
Mr Starmer, 60, was speaking as it was alleged Qatar security forces arrested and abused LGBT people as recently as last month. The Human Rights Watch group interviewed four transgender women, one bisexual woman and a gay man detained between 2019 and 2022.
They said they were verbally abused, kicked and punched after being held without charge in an underground jail in Doha. One had their head shaved and another was in solitary confinement.
HRW said: “All six said police forced them to sign pledges indicating they would ‘cease immoral activity’.” It added trans women were told to attend “conversion therapy’.
England skipper Harry Kane will wear an anti-discrimination armband at the World Cup as part of the FA’s plans to highlight human rights. Qatar said HRW’s claims contain “information that is unequivocally false”.
It added everyone is welcome at the World Cup, which starts on November 20, regardless
of their sexuality.
Qatar did warn against public shows of affection and said it does not “operate ‘conversion centres’.”
Mr Starmer boasted of being “a bit of a lad" who got a detention for fighting in school.
The Labour leader agreed with former classmate Lord Andrew Cooper’s assessment of his childhood pal.
The Tory peer said of his old school pal Mr Starmer: “He was quite different to the personality that people see and criticise today.
“I see people criticise him for being kind of boring and wooden and things; he was very lively, very sporty, very musical - a bit of a lad at school, he was a live wire.”
Mr Starmer told LBC: “He’s not completely wrong about that."
The Labour chief admitted he once got a detention for scrapping, but claimed he could not remember who was involved.
"They were always around the back of the sheds,” he said.
“There was bits and bobs going on, yeah.”
He also ruled out rejoining the EU if he becomes Prime Minister.
Mr Starmer was Shadow Brexit Secretary in the last Parliament and led calls for a second EU referendum.
However, Labour’s stunning defeat at the December 2019 general election helped persuade him to abandon calls for a re-run of the Brexit vote.
"It's a straight no from me, we're not going back into the EU - that isn't a position of my party, that isn't what an incoming Labour government would do,” he insisted.
"We do think that we should make Brexit work. I think all that's happened so far is we've got Brexit done in the sense that we're out of the EU.
“I think we've got to make it work now."
