PM Keir Starmer stands accused of multiple instances of misleading Parliament. This is why his opponents tabled a vote to try and force a probe into his behaviour – a tactic Starmer himself once deployed against then-PM Boris Johnson:
Keir Starmer, “What my political opponents are doing tomorrow is a political stunt”
Cathy Newman, “It’s a stunt you pulled in opposition against the last, Conservative, government”
Keir Starmer, "The reason they’re doing it is because they don’t believe what we’re doing as a… pic.twitter.com/QXUdZJ86jZ
— Farrukh (@implausibleblog) April 27, 2026
Stunted ambitions
Dan Hodges of the Daily Mail is known for having a mixture of very bad and very good opinions (mostly trending bad, to be fair). On the issue of Starmer’s many deceptions, he’s been trending spot-on, and has handily compiled the following list:
Here are the 7 separate occasions Keir Starmer misled the House, misled the country or broke the Ministerial code over the Mandelson affair > Daily Mail > https://t.co/4t2NVwTNh4
— (((Dan Hodges))) (@DPJHodges) April 28, 2026
In summary, Hodge’s list includes Starmer misleading Parliament by telling the House that:
- Due process was followed when Mandelson was hired as ambassador to the US (it wasn’t).
- Pressure was not applied to civil servants vetting Mandelson (it was).
As I’ve been saying. Keir Starmer lied to the House last Wednesday. It’s not even a debatable point any more. He sad no pressure was applied “whatsoever”. And it was. https://t.co/T0AJSjMtVT
— (((Dan Hodges))) (@DPJHodges) April 27, 2026
Starmer also:
- Selectively presented quotes from civil servant Olly Robbins to give a false impression of the evidence he’d given (making a similar point in a Sunday Times interview).
- Almost certainly breached the ministerial code by holding secret meetings with Palantir. As we reported, Starmer claimed this meeting wasn’t a ‘meeting’ despite officials referring to it as a “meeting”. It later emerged that Starmer himself also referred to it as a “meeting”.
- Claimed that no one could have foreseen that anyone would want to inspect his then-chief of staff Morgan McSweeney’s phone. We later learned that Downing Street met to discuss the potential for this happening before McSweeney’s phone was conveniently ‘stolen’.
- Pushed for Mandelson to get the ambassador position without “proper vetting”.
Boris Johnson
In 2022, then-PM Boris Johnson was having his own transparency crisis. As the Guardianreported at the time:
MPs will vote on Thursday on a Labour motion that would trigger an investigation by the House of Commons privileges committee into whether Johnson misled parliament over a string of lockdown-busting parties in Downing Street.
Starmer urged Conservative MPs to seize the opportunity to get rid of Johnson and “bring decency, honesty and integrity back into our politics”.
Johnson would eventually give the investigation the go-ahead, leading to his downfall. Given this, you can see why Starmer would want to avoid allowing any such probe to go ahead.
Starmer also described Johnson as:
a man without shame
While we don’t disagree with the sentiment, Johnson did at least agree to an investigation. This means Starmer is even more shameless than Johnson by his own standards.
Case to answer, Starmer
As Hodges has shown, there’s a strong argument for probing Starmer’s behaviour. Despite this, the man himself is whipping his party to prevent them voting for transparency:
If this was during the Corbyn years, the Papers tomorrow would show Starmer mocked up as Stalin https://t.co/v85y2iGqdo
— Philip Proudfoot (@PhilipProudfoot) April 27, 2026
Starmer might cling on for another day with tactics like this, but the writing is on the wall.
Featured image via Sky News
By Willem Moore
From Canary via This RSS Feed.