Keir Starmer’s announcement he will resign if police fine him for breaking lockdown rules followed a weekend of consultations with parliamentary colleagues and party staff. Some of his advisers thought he should have made the statement on Friday, as soon as Durham police said they were reopening an investigation into his curry and beer during a campaign event in April 2021.
They believed such a promise would help Starmer get ahead of the story, which has become an obsession for some of the right-wing press. They argued that his demand that Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak should resign over a Downing Street lockdown breach meant that he would have no choice but to go if he was fined so he might as well make the pledge in advance.
If Durham police could be pressurised by the tabloids into reopening an investigation that had already concluded that Starmer was innocent, it might be no harm to highlight the stakes involved in their next steps. And the Labour leader's statement on Monday drew the sharpest contrast between his approach to integrity and the rule of law and that of the prime minister.
Conservatives’ pleasure
The Conservatives were enjoying Starmer’s discomfort so much that they and their allies in the press spent much of the weekend demanding that he should promise to resign if fined. By Sunday, they had started to think about the weakness of their foothold on the moral high ground while the prime minister was waiting to be fined for further Downing Street parties, all of which will be documented in civil servant Sue Gray’s report.
Jacob Rees-Mogg suggested that neither Starmer nor Johnson should resign over fines but should focus instead on the issues important to voters. In fact, Starmer's announcement means that he will be able to focus on those issues, holding Johnson to account after the queen's speech setting out the government's legislative programme on Tuesday.
Possible successors
Starmer's promise to resign if fined is a gamble and Angela Rayner's decision to make the same pledge (she was at the Durham gathering too) means Labour could lose its leader and deputy leader at the same time. It will generate speculation about possible successors, with shadow levelling-up secretary Lisa Nandy the pundits' favourite, followed by shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper, shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson and shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves.
Perhaps the biggest risk for Starmer is that, after studying the alternatives, his colleagues may decide that one of them might be a better option than him, fine or no fine.