Partygate

You do understand that it was Boris that stood there and made the rules? Follow the science etc.

Labour had ever right to say keep the rules but they didn’t see the science reports.

This is what I hate about politics when people act like they give a flying f@ck about them and have to back blue or red.

Judge those in charge!

 

Starmer wasn't at a hotel, he was at the Durham Miner's Hall.
"Describing the event, he added: “We’re on the road at the end of the day, we’re in the office preparing. Now, that evening, from memory, we were doing an online event for members because we had this get out the vote thing.
At some point, this was in the evening, everybody’s hungry and then that takeaway was ordered. Restaurants and pubs were closed, so takeaways were really the only way you could eat.

“So, this was brought in and at various points people went through the kitchen, got a plate, had some food to eat and got on with their work.”

So, unless Starmer is lying through his teeth which, unlike Johnson, he's not known for, it was a different event from the one the Twitterati are gloating about.

 

TBH, I suspect Sunak has probably been hard done by, due to being unwittingly caught up in the culture of 'do as we say, not what we do' at No 10. Johnson, however, has clearly lied through his teeth for months about a long series of unlawful boozy gatherings that broke the Covid rules that his government set up.

Whatever the fine detail of the Starmer 'beergate' situation, there's still a big difference between a) an isolated incidence of being away on the road and getting food and drink at the end of a working day for your workforce who are staying away from home, and b) holding regular boozy gatherings in the middle of London for people who could and should have gone home after work. One is understandable to most reasonable-minded people and the other is a set of entitled arseholes persistently breaking the rules because they think they're above the law.

You chide me for linking the Guardian and you're citing Tom Harwood as a critical source. Please.

 

Your assertion that it happened regularly is pure conjecture. There's no evidence for that whatsoever. The fact that it has only been reported once is almost certainly because it was an isolated incident.With all the publicity around Partygate it's inconceivable that there wouldn't have been more leaks about other incidents if they'd been happening regularly.

Harwood is quoting the hotel as serving food until 9pm. But how is that relevant if Starmer and his team were at Durham Miners' Hall, not at the hotel, and continued working there after 10pm?
They were 300 miles from home having a takeaway meal during a break from working into the night. If you can't see that that's different from the regular booze-ups in Downing Street then I'm flabbergasted.

 

Sorry, somehow botched the quote function. My reply is in the quote box above.

 

At least Angela Rayner can hold her head up for not attending........oh hang on

 

Only way we will know if it's a one off is if the Tories are saving up clips of evidence to use at a later date, they will be secretly filming Starmer and Raynor every hour of every day in the hope of finding something on them. As it stands it is a one off and detracts from the real problems of politics in this country.

 

Who would know about it if there had been multiple Labour social gatherings in breach of the rules? Seriously? Lots of people - caterers, takeaways, delivery people, venue bookers, taxi drivers, etc etc. It's inconceivable that no one would have leaked info to the press if these unlawful events had been happening.

Presumably you haven't done much political activism. Campaign events don't keep normal working hours. Political meetings and people working on electioneering frequently work late into the night. They were on a trip away and will have wanted to maximise what they got done before heading home. Starmer has stated that this was a meal break during a work session and they went back to work afterwards. Presumably the police believed that, which is why they took no action. It's not for Starmer to prove that they went back to work - innocent until proven guilty, remember - it's for others to prove that they didn't if they want a conviction pinned on them.

Somebody at Downing Street pre-planned a birthday party for Johnson, which included a birthday cake (hardly normal work meal break fayre) his wife, one of his children and his interior decorator. That's not a normal meal break, essential to a working day, it's a social event, which were not allowed at the time. It's not the eating of cake per se that is the difference in law, it's that one was a non-essential social gathering for a birthday - at a time when millions of ordinary people were forbidden to hold birthday gatherings - and the other was a meal break at work, which were legal.

It's bizarre that you can't understand the difference between that and a pause for a takeaway during a working trip away.

 

If they had better titbits than this on Starmer they would have published them by now. Looks to me like this is all they have on him, a rather desperate attempt to deflect on the truly awful governing of this country over the past years.

#johnsonout

 

A one-off ? He was in Durham for 3 days,Maybe 2 nights of social events ?

 

I’ve had my problems with this government but it’s a better alternative than the opposition who don’t even know who a woman is.

The Johnson out at this election will only get you another Terrible labour council who have run down our city of Bradford.

The Labour Party of today under Starmer pretend to be holier than thou but scratch the service and the hypocrisy of this party comes to the service,look at Starmer for months went on about party gate but when his own hypocrisy happened he wanted to talk about other things.

The day Johnson went to India for trade deals the Labour Party cancelled the debate on child hood cancer and turned it a debate on Johnson for the TV news that’s the alternative.

 

and apparently she had had some sort of spiced pork pie.............at least I think that's what she meant when she referred to "flashing her ginger growler"

 

I wasn't referring to the number of nights, was I? The 'one-off' was a response to @Aaron Baker, who suggested (with no evidence whatsoever) that there were likely to have been multiple LP breaches of Covid regulations about gatherings.

Whether it was one night or two is irrelevant. It was a working trip away and Starmer, like any leader of a political party, is a very busy man. So he will have wanted to get as much work done as possible during the trip. Unless there is evidence to the contrary there is no reason (other than political bias) to doubt his statement that this was a meal break during a work session. Unlike Johnson, Starmer isn't acknowledged by everyone, including his own friends and MPs, to be a compulsive serial liar.

If the Tories had any dirt on the LP about Covid regulation breaches they would certainly have unleashed it by now, before today's local elections. They don't, so they're clutching at straws. They're trying to fabricate a single bottle of beer during a work meal break as equivalent to their multiple parties and social gatherings when everyone else was prohibited by law from socialising at all.