Prime minister Boris Johnson has condemned the behaviour of protestors near Parliament, who targeted Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer with verbal abuse in an incident on Monday.
The protestors took the to streets of London near Parliament to voice their opposition to Covid measures, including vaccines. After being spotted by members of the crowd, Sir Keir [pictured] quickly became a target for abuse.
Following the prime minister’s debunked claim in Parliament last week that Sir Keir had failed to prosecute serial sex offender Jimmy Savile while serving as director of public prosecutions, the Labour leader was angrily confronted by members of the crowd who were aiming vociferous comments at him.
Some of the comments he faced included being called a “traitor”, while others attacked him for siding with government in support of strict Covid measures including lockdowns and Covid passports. Others at the scene angrily questioned Sir Keir about why Savile was not prosecuted during his time in the legal sector.
Footage uploaded to social media showed Sir Keir being escorted into a police car for his safety just after 17:00 GMT on Victoria Embankment. The police later confirmed that two people had been arrested after a traffic cone was thrown at officers on the scene.
Having condemned the “absolutely disgraceful” and “completely unacceptable” incident of harassment against his counterpart, Johnson stopped short of apologising for the comments he made in Parliament.
A Downing Street source later told the BBC that it was unreasonable to suggest the prime minister was responsible for the harassment against Sir Keir.
Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis also talked up Johnson's innocence, suggesting that it would be foolhardy to use the prime minister’s comments to “excuse behaviour from thugs”.
However, several Conservative MPs have called on Johnson to apologise, maintaining that the incident could tangibly be linked to his comments in Parliament.
In the Commons last week, Johnson falsely claimed that as director of public prosecutions, Sir Keir had “spent most of his time prosecuting journalists and failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile”.
The comments came as Johnson was being questioned by MPs following the partial release of senior civil servant Sue Gray’s report into parties that took place in Downing Street while Covid restrictions were in place.
Shortly after, Johnson clarified that Sir Keir had “had nothing to do personally” with the decision not to prosecute Savile and that he had aimed to “make a point about Sir Keir’s responsibility for the organisation as a whole”.
After the incident at Monday’s protest, Tory MP and former Northern Ireland secretary, Julian Smith, said that the “false Savile slurs” against Sir Keir must be “withdrawn in full”.
Tobias Elwood, chair of the Commons Defence Committee, separately tweeted: “Let's stop this drift towards a Trumpian style of politics from becoming the norm.”
Meanwhile, senior Conservative MP Sir Roger Gale, who has been among those calling for Johnson to resign over the ‘partygate’ controversy, said that he feared Monday’s incident came as a “direct result of the deliberately careless use of language in the Chamber”.
One of Johnson’s senior aides, his head of policy Munira Mirza, resigned last week over his refusal to apologise for the remarks at the time.
Labour MPs have also piled the pressure on the PM to make an apology, with shadow mental health minister Rosena Allin-Khan calling on Johnson to make “an unreserved apology for his awful smearing”.
Sir Keir himself has not asked for Johnson to apologise for the comments, saying that it was “up to the prime minister how he conducts himself”.
Photo taken from Wikimedia Commons
