Oh dear. It seems that Labour have been caught trying to be too clever by half with their latest anti-Tory attack ad. The Starmer army proudly put out a hard-hitting graphic last night, which read: ‘Do you think adults convicted of sexually assaulting children should go to prison? Rishi Sunak doesn’t’ alongside a smiling photo of the Prime Minister. The party says that its basis for this tweet is figures from the Ministry of Justice which show that 4,500 adults convicted of sexually assaulting children since 2010 have served no prison time.
Such a claim is dubious, to say the least. For a start, Sunak was only elected in 2015 and has held the premiership for less than six months: to hold him personally responsible for judicial sentencing under David Cameron is quite the stretch. But Mr S is more intrigued by Labour’s curious decision to open up this can of worms, given the fuss they made over Boris Johnson’s attack on Sir Keir Starmer’s record as Director of Public Prosecutions. Starmer of course was head of the Crown Prosecution Service when it chose to not prosecute Jimmy Savile. If we are now holding Sunak responsible for not locking up ‘dangerous child abusers’, ought we not do the same for Sir Keir’s role as DPP – especially when he appeared to take responsibility for these failings at the time?
The attack is all the more remarkable when one considers that Starmer, as DPP, was on the Sentencing Council, the body which sets sentencing guidelines, until 2013. In one council meeting in September 2013, sexual ‘offences where the victim is under 13’ were discussed, according to the public minutes. Starmer himself was therefore partly responsible for the tools judges use to sentence those convicted of sexual offending against children – including the period between 2010 to 2013 for which Labour is now attacking the Tories. How then can Rishi Sunak be blamed for the sentencing of such offences while Sir Keir gets off scot-free?
Embarrassingly for Labour, Twitter have now added a mandatory correction to their tweet which notes that:
Tweet implies that the PM, Rishi Sunak, doesn’t support prison sentences for sexual assaults against children. The current sentencing guidelines for this crime has a maximum sentence of 14 years imprisonment. There is no conservative party policy that plans to remove this.
The politics behind the move is that Labour are desperate to show that they can be as nasty as the Tories when it comes to punchy comms. But in a bid to depict themselves as the ruthless pragmatists, the party’s strategists have inadvertently exposed their internal divides to the world. Backbencher John McDonnell has already attacked the tweet, declaring that ‘This is not the sort of politics a Labour Party, confident of its own values and preparing to govern, should be engaged in.’ Kevin Maguire, the veteran Mirror hack has described it as ‘gutter politics’; George Eaton of the New Statesman dubbed it ‘one of the worst political adverts in recent UK history.’
And even some of Starmer’s own handpicked shadow cabinet seem unable to defend the tweet, with Lucy Powell struggling to do so repeatedly in interviews this morning on LBC, Sky, the BBC and GB News. In an excruciating exchange with the Beeb’s Naga Munchetty, she defended it as part of the ‘cut and thrust’ of normal political debate but then, er, refused to repeat the tweet on air.
If even Powell won’t defend it, how exactly does Starmer think the rest of his backbenchers will react?
Below is the full list of Labour politicians who have distanced themselves from the ad:
John McDonnell, MP : ‘This is not the sort of politics a Labour party, confident of its own values and preparing to govern, should be engaged in.’
Diane Abbott, MP : ‘Sentencing is the responsibility of the judiciary. You would think a former DPP would know that. Horrible ad.’