A Labour MP has claimed a reporter broke into her office to find material about Beergate, amid the media furore over accusations of lockdown breaches that she said had been devastating to her in her first years as an MP.
Speaking for the first time since police cleared Keir Starmer of lockdown breaches, the City of Durham MP, Mary Foy, said she had been shattered by the media storm surrounding the meeting at her offices, where Starmer was pictured with a beer.
She described how the teenage children of her staff had been doorstepped by reporters and members of her local party cold-called and accused of being at lockdown parties.
“We had the papers on the phone every day, camped outside the office. One reporter managed to break into the office when the cleaner was coming up, to see if they could find things in our office,” Foy said.
“They were knocking on my door at half-ten at night. They doorstepped a member of staff’s 14-year-old child in the middle of the day and got him really worried. Some staff members’ parents were doorstepped and they were cold-calling members of the CLP [constituency Labour party] to ask if they were at this so-called party.”
Foy was in the middle of moving house when Starmer’s office called and said the Labour leader was planning to make a campaign stop in Durham.
She had three days’ notice, describing a house full of boxes and a hurry to get everything ready in the midst of local elections. “I could have done without it,” she said.
“We made sure that there was social distancing, it was three in a room, that type of thing … The photo that you see is me and Keir and Angela, eating it standing up because it was so late, finishing a bit of work, and that’s it. That’s not a party.”
Foy said she had no particular cause to socialise with Starmer. She is a member of the leftwing Socialist Campaign Group of MPs, often at odds with Starmer’s leadership.
“To be quite frank I’d only met Keir once before,” she said. “There was no way that there was any real chit-chat. Because we didn’t really know each other.”
The story was first published in May 2021 after a video taken by a local student of Starmer with a beer circulated – with limited impact. But it was revived in December as Johnson came under pressure over parties in Downing Street, with the prime minster using the story during PMQs.
In January, Foy lost her mother and her father had a stroke. At the same time, the story was gaining traction. During the run-up to the local elections, it was covered extensively. Durham police initially cleared Starmer of wrongdoing in February.
But the papers kept reporting new developments, including the attendance of the deputy leader, Angela Rayner, initially denied by Labour. A memo was also leaked to the Mail on Sunday detailing plans for a curry as part of the visit.
Richard Holden, the MP for North West Durham, also wrote to Durham police, saying he had uncovered new evidence. When police reopened their investigation in May, Starmer pledged he would resign if he was fined.
Some of the new evidence Holden had handed over was adverts for a local party quiz night on the same evening – but the invitation makes clear it was on Zoom. Foy had written underneath, “have a greasy night” – a term Holden claimed meant a drunken party.
“It was unbelievable,” Foy said. “I type, ‘Sorry I can’t make it, have a great night.’ Obviously. Nobody in the north-east that I know ever used that word ‘greasy’ [to mean drunken]. But as if an MP would say, have a great drunken night?”
Foy said one of the lasting legacies was a breakdown in the relationship between her and Tory Durham MPs, something she said could affect work in the local area.
“I thought I was quite friendly with Richard Holden – we were all new together,” she said. “We were getting on well with plans for levelling up – what a farce that is – but we had to decide on some projects and we had issues we talked about. Obviously now it’s a working relationship that is really ruined.”
Foy said her scars from the experience came mostly from the way she was treated by the press and MPs, rather than constituents, and said that was because few members of the public had bought the idea that she and Starmer had done anything wrong.
“People aren’t fools. They know there was no comparison. No matter how much the Tory MPs and the press were trying to make this story, people weren’t having it.”
