Same rules should apply to Labour leader as everyone else: Tory MP
Dudley South MP Mike Wood said launch of police investigation took too longĀ
A TORY MP has welcomed a decision to re-investigate Sir Keir Starmer over Beergate and said it is important to highlight that rules on gatherings during the Covid pandemic applied to everyone.
Dudley South MP Mike Wood told GB News: “Well, I think it’s the right decision that Durham police have finally made.
“It’s really important that it’s clear…that the same rules actually do apply to everybody.
“And I think public need to know whether Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner are guilty of quite a lot of hypocrisy over the last few months with what they’ve be saying in Parliament and outside parliament and now really how much they’ve been clamming up when they’ve been asked legitimate questions about what looks a lot like a party in Durham.”
Asked if the results of the investigation could backfire on the Tories, he said: “It’s difficult to understand at the moment why, Rishi Sunak having a glass of water on the Prime Minister’s birthday in the Cabinet Room in a building he was working in anyway, it was a breach of the regulations, whereas what we assume was a significant number of Labour Party officials, shadow ministers and activists having a curry and a beer at the end of the campaign day, why that wasn’t a breach.”
“It looks at least as serious, so if they do decide their rules were broken. I think people do need – it does need to be explained, ‘OK, so what actually was the difference?'”
He added: “I think that the investigation absolutely should happen. I think it’s taken a lot longer than it should have for Durham police to look at this, again, particularly in the light of the approach that the Met has taken in, in terms of how they’ve been interpreting and what makes up a gathering…
“I think if this was a breach of the rules, as the police and the lawyers understand it, then that needs to be applied evenly and consistently and it doesn’t matter which party you’re from.”
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