Sir Keir Starmer has defied critics of Labour’s attack advert accusing Rishi Sunak of not wanting child sex abusers to go to jail by saying he stands by “every word”. The Labour leader said he makes “absolutely zero apologies” for the campaign that has provoked anger within his own party regardless of how “squeamish” it makes people.
Amid frontbench unease, senior figures including former home secretary Lord David Blunkett called for the ad to be withdrawn, arguing that Labour is better than the “gutter” politics. But, writing in the Daily Mail, Sir Keir stood by the ad and said he refuses “to just stand by or avoid calling this what it is”.
He criticised a “path of decline” that he said the economy, NHS and criminal justice system have been placed on in the last decade under the Conservatives. It is not just rapists that are not being taken to court, he argued, but burglaries and thefts are not being prosecuted, nor are the fly-tippers turning neighbourhoods into “junk yards”.
