DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Police must do their duty over Beergate
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With each passing day, Sir Keir Starmer becomes more and more like the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dyke.
He knows the holes in his leaky Beergate narrative are growing but thinks he may still save himself from going under if he can keep plugging them.
By his constant dissembling, the Labour leader, who loves to castigate Boris Johnson over alleged lockdown breaches, has shown himself to be the worst kind of hypocrite.
He presents himself as some sort of Honest John who can be trusted to run the country. Yet in truth he’s as slippery as a snake-oil salesman.
Keir Starmer knows the holes in his leaky Beergate narrative are growing but thinks he may still save himself from going under if he can keep plugging them
Every incriminating fact about the Durham beer and takeaway party he and his activists enjoyed in defiance of lockdown has had to be dragged out of him.
Even now we have only a fraction of the whole story.
How many attended? Was it six or seven as Sir Keir implied in January, or around 30 as the curry delivery driver told the Daily Mail two days ago?
Why did Sir Keir and his team deny that deputy leader Angela Rayner was there until video evidence shamed them into admitting she was?
Was it because the gathering might have seemed too much like a party?
And, crucially, is it really plausible the bash was merely a ‘pause’ in a busy day, as he claims?
Sir Keir asks us to believe that following an arduous day on the election campaign trail, a full meal and boozing until after 10pm, he and his chums went straight back to work? Pull the other one!
As Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries put it yesterday: ‘No reasonable person believes Labour’s story. So why do Durham police?’
One may sympathise with Chief Constable Jo Farrell here. Her police and crime commissioner is Labour, as is the constituency MP and just about every other local official with any authority. The line of least resistance for her is to do nothing.
But she is paid to carry out her duties without fear or favour. There is prima facie evidence of lockdown breaches similar to those investigated by the Metropolitan Police in Downing Street.
As long as she fails to investigate, it looks like a clear case of double standards.
If Sir Keir has nothing to hide, he should encourage the police to step in and clear his name. Or is he afraid the dyke may burst, and the flood waters sweep away his credibility for good?
GPs on the brink
An average of just one GP per 2,200 patients – one per 3,000 in some areas. More than a third of practices so overwhelmed that they have stopped taking routine appointments.
Already under strain before the pandemic, our GP system is in real danger of collapse.
Instead of sniping at each other, politicians, the NHS and medical unions must work together to recruit more doctors and radically improve working practices.
Without urgent remedial action, the traditional family surgery may soon become a thing of the past.
Ukraine honours PM
While the Prime Minister’s enemies try to drag him down over Partygate, in Ukraine he’s hailed as a hero.
Invited to address the country’s parliament – the first world leader to do so since Europe was plunged into war – his words were stirring.
‘Ukrainians taught the world that the brute force of an aggressor counts for nothing against the moral force of a people determined to be free.’
It’s a timely reminder that there is a big and dangerous world outside the self-absorbed Westminster bubble. And an oppressed people yearning to breathe free.
