Think Sir Keir Starmer is a total hypocrite? He doesn’t
LABOUR has long been the Really Nasty Party.
Its spittle-flecked screams of “Tory scum”, “racist” and “Nazi” defile the Westminster cockpit of political debate.
But Sir Keir Starmer’s portrayal of Rishi Sunak as a friend of child rapists surely takes the prize.
His local election poster shows the PM and asks: “Do you think adults convicted of sexually assaulting children should go to prison? Rishi Sunak doesn’t.”
This from a party which turned a blind eye to the gang rape of thousands of young girls in its northern strongholds!
A party which, more than any other, has put the human rights of criminals above those of their victims.
READ MORE ON LABOUR
The ad sparked uproar, not just from Tories but within Starmer’s own party — from lefties such as John McDonnell and Diane Abbott to respected elder statesman David Blunkett.
“Please withdraw it,” said McDonnell. “We, the Labour Party, are better than this.”
David Blunkett branded the poster “deeply offensive gutter politics” and nailed Starmer personally for allowing it.
“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,” he said.
Most read in News
“I find it impossible to believe that, as a former Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Keir Starmer would endorse publishing this kind of material.”
Indeed, Starmer himself was a key figure as State prosecutor in the moves to adopt the soft-pedalling policies he now lays at Rishi Sunak’s feet.
He was on the 2012 Sentencing Council which issued guidelines for sexual assault on child victims under and over 13 years.
Two-faced hypocrisy
The plan triggered outrage at the time, with Shadow Attorney-General Emily Thornberry demanding “an urgent rethink”.
Curiously, Thornberry, a Starmer toady, is now fully behind the poster slur.
Labour Party insiders seem to be cock-a-hoop over the publicity it has attracted.
So are the Tories.
Polls and focus groups suggest this scandal will only turn the spotlight on Starmer’s growing reputation for two-faced hypocrisy.
First there was his four-year battle to make Jeremy Corbyn the most extreme, pro-Russia, pro-China, pro-Hezbollah PM in history.
Then came his mealy-mouthed refusal to define a woman as an adult female human being.
And last month he vowed to axe Budget plans to help well-off pensioners — while enjoying precisely the same perk — as former State prosecutor.
But it is the attack on Rishi Sunak over child sex crimes which has really blown up in his face.
It follows Rishi’s own direct hit on Labour for allowing British Pakistani rape gangs to rampage with impunity in its own northern backyard.
The hideous, decades-long abuse is still going on in towns and cities across the UK, he said.
To their credit, Labour MPs past and present Ann Cryer and Sarah Champion have bravely spoken out against these heinous crimes — at huge cost to their political careers.
Champion was instantly gagged by Labour Party chiefs.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman last week described vulnerable white girls “sometimes in care, sometimes in challenging circumstances being pursued, raped, drugged, and harmed by gangs of British Pakistani men, who work in child abuse rings or networks.
“We’ve seen institutions, social workers, state agencies, cops and social workers turn a blind eye to this — out of political correctness and out of fear of being called racist,” she said.
How on earth did these evil gangs get away with it?
The answer is provided by Azir Nafzal, the former Chief Crown Prosecutor for North West England.
Forced into action
In 2018 he told the BBC that the Home Office under Gordon Brown’s Premiership emailed police forces urging them them not to investigate the sexual exploitation of young girls.
It suggested the girls, below the legal age of consent, had made “informed choices”.
This was in 2008, the same year Starmer became State prosecutor.
It was not until 2011, when courageous Times journalist Andrew Norfolk began probing, that police and Labour councils were forced to take action.
Norfolk, too, was vilified. But dozens of abusers have since been jailed.
Read More on The Sun
So here’s a question for Keir Starmer’s next mug-shot poster: “What did you know — and when — about the email to police chiefs?
“And what did you do about it?”