Damned when you do: why Starmer can’t win with the Mail

Feeling that you just can’t win when it comes to the Daily Mail presumably comes with the territory if you are Labour leader, but Keir Starmer could be forgiven for thinking his treatment is particularly unfair.

“Starmer accused of piling pressure on police,” the paper’s front-page headline said on Tuesday, directly below a red banner saying, “Beergate: Day 13”, a tally of how many days, some might argue, the paper has been trying to persuade Starmer to do exactly what he has now done.

The Labour leader’s decision to pledge that he would resign if issued with a penalty over an April campaign event in Durham last year, where he was pictured holding a beer, “placed detectives in the difficult position” of knowing their decision would have major political ramifications, the Mail story warned.

One unnamed government source said “ministers were concerned that Sir Keir’s intervention could place ‘undue pressure’ on Durham Constabulary to clear Sir Keir, or at least refrain from fining him”.

A separate editorial comment from the paper said, in typically steadfast style, that Starmer’s televised statement announcing the decision “combined lawyerly weasel words with trademark sanctimony”.

In a section that seemingly hints at a lack of contact between those writing the editorials and the team in charge of news, the comment added: “Superficially of course, he appears to be doing the decent thing, though frankly, he didn’t have much choice.”

The lack of choice would arguably be the message regular readers would have taken from the 13 days – and counting – of Mail coverage about “beergate”. One front page, on 30 April, boomed: “Police told to investigate Labour’s lies.”

A series of other similar front pages urged Durham police to look again at an incident that they had concluded in February had broken no Covid rules, and then explained at length how untenable Starmer’s position would be if the force changed its mind.

Other stories have detailed what the paper insists are inconsistencies in Labour’s narrative about the evening in question, and reasons why it demonstrably broke guidelines in place at the time.

It is, of course, now a matter for Durham police, who have some experience in politically charged Covid investigations, having decided to take no action against Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s then-chief adviser, for his ill-advised drives through their territory in the peak of lockdown.

No one, beyond perhaps a handful of experienced detectives, knows what they will decide. But one thing seems clear: whatever happens, the Daily Mail will not be especially happy.