Tory prime minister Rishi Sunak, in alliance with sympathetic right-leaning newspapers, is attacking Keir Starmer as a leading human rights lawyer and public prosecutor in order to wrest support from the centre-left party.
Given the actions on the part of the incumbent government, these outbursts can be attributed to the increasingly desperate tactics of a government that is running out of ideas and is probably at the end of its tether after 14 years in power.
“When @RishiSunak sees a group chanting jihad on our streets, he bans them. Keir Starmer invoices them,” the party added in an adjacent comment.
The London government has declared Hizb ut-Tahrir a “terrorist” organisation and banned it from operating in the UK. On Wednesday, during the prime minister’s weekly questions in the House of Commons, Sunak said the now-banned group was once a “client” of Starmer.
The Labour spokesman stressed that Starmer did not officially represent Hizb ut-Tahrir, and shortly afterwards became chief public prosecutor for England and Wales.
“The nature of being a lawyer is that you represent and give advice to a whole range of clients, including people that you don’t agree with,” he added.
However, the Tory government finds trickery in every word. For example, the pro-Tory British press recently reported that Starmer had represented Irish Republican Army member and hate preacher Abu Qatada, which is exactly what Starmer was obliged to do under the “cab rank rule.”
Moreover, this may be besides a political struggle, also a personal one. Sunak, 43, a privately educated former investment banker, likes to accuse Starmer, 61, of being a “lefty lawyer.”
Starmer has played a key role in many cases. Starmer has defended a number of important cases as a human rights barrister, including defending trade unions and anti-McDonald’s activists. He has also worked to ensure that the Police Service of Northern Ireland complies with human rights legislation. In 2008 Starmer was appointed Director of Public Prosecutions for England and Wales at the Crown Prosecution Service and led the prosecution of legislators for misuse of their expenses, journalists for phone hacking and young rioters involved in riots across England in 2011, and in 2015 received a knighthood giving him the title “Sir Keir.”
Sunak responded by referring to Starmer as “Sir Softie.”
Starmer said in an ITV documentary this week that mistakes had certainly been made during his time in charge of the CPS, but he noted that “But there’ll be no smoking guns, no skeletons in the closet.”
In recent months under Tory leadership there has been a horrendous crisis, with high living costs, record hospital waiting lists and five prime ministers changed since the Brexit vote in 2016.
According to the poll, only 20 percent of voters support the ruling party.
