Starmer questioned on whether voice coach visit breached lockdown rules

Sir Keir Starmer is facing accusations that he breached Covid rules by meeting a voice coach during the winter of 2020.

The Prime Minister reportedly employed Leonie Mellinger to help him prepare a response to Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal, according to a book by two Sunday Times journalists.

Get In, by journalists Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund, claims classically trained dramatist Ms Mellinger advised the Prime Minister on his speaking style.

Excerpts of the book published in the Sunday Times said she qualified for “key worker” status and visited Labour Party headquarters wearing a face mask in December 2020, to advise Sir Keir on how to publicly respond to the Brexit deal.

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Following the reports, Tory former minister Richard Holden has written to the Prime Minister asking him to say whether he thinks it was a breach of the law, as London and the South East were under regional restrictions at the time.

Mr Holden, the MP for Basildon and Billericay, also asked whether Sir Keir would now appoint an independent investigator to clear up the claims.

He also asked: “Do you think it would be right for other members of the public to get acting lessons during tier 4 restrictions?”

Signing off the letter, the Tory MP added: “There is a strong public interest into your conduct during the pandemic and it is clear from these revelations that not only have you misled the public but you had a casual disregard for the law at a time when so many people were making such difficult sacrifices all in the service of advancing your own political career.

“You have said ‘honesty and decency matters’ – I hope you will treat these questions to you with the same standards you asked of others.”

A Labour spokesman said: “The rules were followed at all times.”

Mr Holden has previously raised questions about the Prime Minister’s conduct during lockdown, including Sir Keir’s attendance at a Labour Party meeting in Durham in April 2021, as he joined a local election campaign.

A police investigation, dubbed Beergate, found neither Sir Keir nor his deputy Angela Rayner breached Covid rules.

Elsewhere in excerpts of the book, Downing Street chief of staff Morgan McSweeney is said to have described his principal as “like an HR manager, not a leader”.

Mr McSweeney is claimed to have voiced fears in private that the Prime Minister “might be too timid”, but also described Sir Keir as “very bright” and “not completely unpolitical”.

Another unnamed ally is claimed to have said Sir Keir was not “driving the train” but sitting at the front of an automatically driven one, akin to London’s Docklands Light Railway.

One of the Prime Minister’s most senior ministers, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper dismissed the claims.

She told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg: “I think what you see with Keir Starmer is a real determination to change the country.

“It’s why he set out the plan for change with clear action, clear things that he’s determined to change across the country.”

Leonie Mellinger was contacted for comment.