The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, was not informed or consulted about the release of a widely criticised Labour advertisement that claims Rishi Sunak does not believe adults convicted of sexually assaulting children should go to prison, the Observer has been told.
As several senior party figures distanced themselves from the poster that has caused a huge row within the party, Labour sources said that Cooper “had nothing to do with it” – despite being in overall charge of crime policy for Labour.
It is understood that Cooper and most of the shadow cabinet were caught unawares when it was released on Thursday on social media, causing a storm of controversy and drawing claims that it carried racist undertones.
Many leading frontbenchers are unhappy that it was put out without them knowing in advance. As well as being in bad taste, they say it opens the leadership to claims of hypocrisy, after last year Keir Starmer accused Boris Johnson of a baseless slur when the then prime minister claimed that the Labour leader had failed to prosecute the paedophile Jimmy Savile during his time as director of public prosecutions.
One well-placed party insider said they understood the digital poster was produced as part of a policy push by the shadow justice secretary, Steve Reed, whose team was keen to highlight the way in which too many criminals were receiving community sentences rather than custodial ones.
The insider added: “My understanding is that there was a big row about before it came out involving the leader’s office and the communications team. And so there should have been: if you are going to put out this sort of divisive material it needed to be widely debated.
“Steve must be furious because this was a good policy which has been totally overshadowed by what has now become ‘graphicgate’.”
Asked on Saturday whether Starmer had approved the graphic or knew about it in advance, a Labour source said the leader had not been aware of it and stressed Starmer would not usually be expected to sign off individual campaign materials.
While the party has officially “doubled down” and insisted since the poster’s release that it has no regrets, there is wide concern about it in the shadow cabinet, the wider frontbench team and on the Labour backbenches.
David Blunkett, the former Labour home secretary, said he had been left “close to despair” by what he described as a “deeply offensive” advert, which he said marked a descent into “gutter” politics.
In a comment piece for the Daily Mail, he wrote: “Once you resort to personal abuse, you create the risk that Britain’s public discourse will degenerate even further – to the levels that we have seen recently in the US.
“When baseless allegations and spurious slurs replace fair and robust political debate, not only is the standing of our leaders undermined, the very foundations of our democracy are compromised.”
Blunkett said he found it “impossible to believe” that Starmer “would endorse publishing this kind of material during a local election campaign”, and he called on him to act.
Meanwhile Labour jitters over its own ballot performance will be increased by the latest Opinium poll for the Observer which shows that the party’s lead has dropped by four points to 11% since last weekend, while Sunak’s approval rating has improved from -15% to -6%. The poll was conducted before news of the row over the poster broke on social media.
Labour is on 41% (-3), the Conservatives 30% (+1), the Lib Dems 10% (+1), Reform 7% (unchanged) and the Greens are also unchanged on 5%.
Starmer still holds a narrow lead over Sunak on the question of who would be the best prime minister: 28% say Starmer would be the best, against 26% who would prefer Sunak.
Adam Drummond of Opinium said it was too early to say whether the result, showing the lowest Labour lead for months, was part of a trend: this would become clearer with more polls in the coming weeks.
On Saturday night, Reed made clear the party would continue its offensive on crime in the run-up to the local elections on 4 May.
“Rape has effectively been decriminalised, with barely one in every 100 reported rapes resulting in a charge,” he said. “Now we find those few rapists who are convicted may receive shockingly short jail terms, or might not end up jailed at all.”
