‘A gross exaggeration’: Corbyn allies dismiss Starmer’s claims he changed policy
Sir Keir Starmer‘s claims he pushed Labour to shift its policy on national security under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership have been dismissed by allies of the former leader, as well as Mr Corbyn himself.
The Labour leader has come under increasing pressure over his support of Mr Corbyn when he served in his shadow cabinet between 2015 and 2020.
Throughout Sir Keir’s own leadership – including this general election campaign – he has faced difficult questions about both his closeness and disloyalty to Mr Corbyn.
He previously argued he had supported Mr Corbyn because he did not think he would ever become prime minister – but later suggested he would have been a better PM than Boris Johnson.
The Labour leader made a deliberate decision to tackle the issue of his closeness to Mr Corbyn head-on in front of an interview audience on Monday night, according to a source close to him.
He had decided, in advance, to highlight the issue of support for Ukraine as an example where he felt Mr Johnson had done better than Mr Corbyn would have, the source added.
He told The Sun’s audience he had remained loyal under Mr Corbyn in order to influence the party’s policy for the better.
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Asked on Tuesday for examples of this, he said national security was an area he believed he had influenced the former leader.
Sir Keir said: “Commitment to Nato, so at no point did the Labour Party change its position on Nato, antisemitism in the shadow cabinet and out publicly.
“And the other area was Salisbury in relation to the poisoning […] where I spoke in the shadow cabinet and spoke publicly about that.”
He said there were other examples but he would not go through a “long list”. “But they are three things with particular importance to me, Nato and the Salisbury incident being to do with national security,” he added.
But Labour advisers under Mr Corbyn said they did not recall Sir Keir “mentioning Nato or the Salisbury poisonings in any meetings he had in the shadow cabinet”.
One said there was not a question of shifting Labour’s policy on Nato because, despite Mr Corbyn’s own hesitancy about the military alliance, he accepted the party as a whole supported it.
“It was never really up for debate,” the source said.
They added that antisemitism was discussed in the shadow cabinet by most members given it had been a considerable issue at the time for the party but Sir Keir did not speak out any more than others “or in a particularly confrontational way”.
“I think it is fine to say he had political differences with people on certain things but to say ‘I was in there fighting the fight is, at the very least, a gross exaggeration,” they said.
“At the time I would say he was very focused on his own brief [shadow Brexit secretary] which is fair enough as it was the prominent brief of the time.”
The relationship between Sir Keir and Mr Corbyn at the time was collegiate but they were not personal friends. “Its not like Keir was ever one of Jeremy’s inner circle so nobody ever thought they were political bedfellows,” the source added.
Another, more critical, insider said: “I don’t recall Starmer saying anything about Nato or Salisbury at the time. He spoke about antisemitism in one shadow cabinet meeting, to my recollection.
“The only area of policy Starmer influenced was driving us into a no-hope Brexit policy that was the main reason we lost voters in the 2019 election.”
A source close to the Labour leader, however, said there are “plenty of people who were in shadow cabinet at the time who would endorse what Keir has been saying”.
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It comes as polling predicted Mr Corbyn will lose his parliamentary seat in the election.
Mr Corbyn, who has been expelled from Labour, is now standing as an independent in his seat of Islington North, London.
A constituency poll, conducted by Survation and published on Tuesday, projected Labour is still set to hold the seat, with the party on 43 per cent and Mr Corbyn in second on 29 per cent.
The former leader pushed back against Sir Keir’s claims he never believed he would take Labour to a victory.
Speaking on LBC, he said: “He never told me that, he never discussed that with me.”
He said the Labour leader was “part of the shadow cabinet at the time” and “endorsed the 2019 manifesto”.
“Indeed we did campaign events together,” he added.
“He said he wanted me to be prime minister,” Mr Corbyn said. “He said he wanted to support me as leader of the Labour Party, he said he supported the manifesto which indeed he voted for in the shadow cabinet.
He added that people should reflect on this and “own up to that”. “Okay his policies have moved on a great deal since then but let’s just reflect on that,” Corbyn added.
The former leader also said it was “utter nonsense” that his manifesto was not fully costed.
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