Watch: Starmer ducks PMQ on Covid rule-breaking

To Westminster, where Prime Minister’s Questions is in full swing. Sir Keir Starmer has delivered yet another tutorial in how to bat away difficult questions – on everything from his reported Chagos deal to concerns about Labour backing a new North Sea oil field to the rather curious matter of the Labour leader’s vocal coach.

It emerged in Get In, a new book about Labour’s rise to power, that Sir Keir’s vocal coach Leonie Mellinger visited the party’s London office on Christmas Eve in 2020. At this time, the city was under tier four regulations while Mellinger’s home city of Brighton was under tier three rules, prompting the Conservatives to suggest the vocal coach may have broken lockdown guidance to see the PM. Quizzed by Tory MP Gagan Mohindra on the specifics, Sir Keir was asked today:

[Were] all rules followed while the country was in tier four lockdown in December 2020 – not just by him, but as his team as well, but also his voice coach, Leona Mellinger?

In an angry retort, Starmer took aim at the Partygate scandal that humiliated the Tory party during the pandemic, blasting his opponents for ‘bringing suitcases of booze into Downing Street, partying and fighting, vomiting up the walls’.