Just stop Doyle! It was another bad Prime Ministers’ Questions this week for Keir Starmer today. Once again, one of those mysterious appointments for which the Prime Minister is never responsible came back to haunt him in public. After Peter Mandelson last week, this time it is Matthew Doyle, Starmer’s former comms chief who was ennobled last month. Talk about jobs for the boys…
Unfortunately just four weeks after his ennoblement, Labour have already been forced to kick him out of their party in the House of Lords, after it emerged Doyle had campaigned for a friend charged with possessing indecent images of children. Party figures were warned about Doyle’s links before he was appointed to the Lords – yet Starmer’s team ploughed on regardless, confirming it on 8 January, more than a month after they were first told. Uh oh…
It proved to be the big issue at today’s PMQs session, with both Kemi Badenoch and Ed Davey lacerating the PM over the appointment. In the subsequent PMQs huddle of journalists, Labour’s spokesman insisted there is ‘no established precedent for withdrawing a peerage after the nomination stage’, claiming that’s why the government ploughed on despite revelations about Doyle’s links to a convicted sex offender.
Yet Sky News’ Sam Coates now reports that Lords clerks have told the Tories they ‘are not aware of any barriers to His Majesty’s Government stopping or delaying an appointment to the House before letters patent are sealed’. So, yes, Starmer could have stopped Doyle’s peerage – despite his suggestion in the Commons today that it was all his ex-spin doctor’s fault.
Who’s going under the bus this time around then eh?
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