Keir Starmer accused of dragging King Charles into party-political row | Politics | News
Sir Keir Starmer accused of disrespecting the King (Image: Getty)
Sir Keir Starmer is accused of dragging the King into a party-political row over the monarch’s flagship speech, the Daily Express has revealed.
The outgoing Prime Minister used a briefing document attached to the speech to attack his political rivals.
The Mandarins were forced to remove an article directed at the Conservative Party from official papers after Conservative MPs staged a protest.
The politicized line was not included in Her Majesty’s speech to Parliament, but was embedded in Sir Keir’s foreword, which took aim at “Tory austerity”.
This reference has now been officially branded as a “party political” statement and removed in an embarrassing fall for the resigned Prime Minister.
Critics said it was a constitutional disgrace that the monarchy’s most important parliamentary event was tarnished by political points.
Such briefings are long-standing official publications produced by the Civil Service, not the ruling party.
These aim to set out the Government’s legislative agenda free of political bias.
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Shadow Cabinet Office minister Mike Wood wrote to the Cabinet Office’s most senior official to complain that the dig breached strict impartiality rules.
In his letter, Mr Wood said the comment breached the Civil Service Act, the Ministerial Code and official guidance for government communicators.
This guidance states that communications should be “objective and descriptive, not biased or polemical.”
In a response seen by the Daily Express, permanent secretary Catherine Little confirmed authorities had removed the offending content.
He wrote: “The authorities removed the party’s political content from the Prime Minister’s foreword and examined the remainder of the document to ensure there were no other political references to the party.”
Ms Little added that the Cabinet Office would “review and update its ‘internal guidance’ to ensure this does not happen again in the future”.
Mr Wood seized on the rebuke, describing it as “the latest humiliation for Starmer’s beleaguered Government”.
He said: “When he took office, he promised the Civil Service ‘you have my trust, my support and, most importantly, my respect’.”
Mike Wood, seen in the photo with Theresa May, attacked the Prime Minister (Image: Getty)
Mr Wood added: “The fact that the Civil Service has now reprimanded Starmer for including party political content in the King’s Speech documents shows how little respect he has for the Civil Service and, worse, the King.”
He said: “Despite promising an ethical and honest government, Starmer’s administration has consistently sought to politicize the Civil Service to compensate for its failure in political strategy and political communication.”
Mr Wood warned that “such behavior cannot be repeated if Labour’s former special adviser becomes the next prime minister”; It was a pointed slap at leadership pioneer Andy Burnham.
The blunder represents a humiliating end to Sir Keir’s premiership; The Prime Minister resigned amid growing calls from his own MPs to step down.
A government spokesman said it was “standard practice to remove political content from documents published by the government”.
