Whipping government MPs to vote against privileges inquiry ‘wrong’ and bad for trust in politics, says Labour’s Emma Lewell
Ben Quinn
Ben Quinn is a Guardian political correspondent.
Forcing Labour MPs to oppose the Tory motion aimed at sparking a probe into Keir Starmer will play into the “terrible narrative” that they are complicit in a cover-up, one of the prime minister’s own backbenchers has said.
Emma Lewell, a leftwing backbencher who spoke immediately after Kemi Badenoch opened the debate, said she shared a feeling with the public of being “let down, disappointed and angry”.
She said:
I feel the way that today’s vote has been handled by the government smacks once again of being out of touch and disconnected from the public mood.
The fact that MPs like me are being whipped into voting against this motion is in my view wrong. It has played into the terrible narrative that there is something to hide and good decent colleagues will be accused of being complicit in a cover-up.
Recent weeks have seen such abuse intensify and ongoing abuse and threats to me and my staff’s safety continues. Tryst has gone and it has been replaced by anger. The already fragile fabric of our democracy is eroding further every day this continues.
Key events
Back in the Commons Alicia Kearns (Con) said she would advise Labour MPs that “your gut will be telling you the right thing to do”. If they realised voting against the motion was wrong, they should vote with their conscience, she said.
She claimed the more senior Labour MPs were staying away from the debate because they knew voting against the motion was wrong.
And she suggested to Labour MPs that there was a chance that the whipping instructions (currently to vote against) might change before the 7pm vote.
Anas Sarwar says Scottish Labour MPs will vote against ‘party political stunt from SNP, Tories and others’
Libby Brooks
Libby Brooks is the Guardian’s Scotland correspondent.
Anas Sarwar has dismissed the debate on referring Keir Starmer to the privileges committee as “a political stunt, nine days out from an election”.
Speaking to media on a visit to a support service for drug users in Glasgow, Sarwar said that Scottish Labour MPs, who have been called back from their campaigning to vote in the Commons tonight, “are going to focus on this election campaign and vote against this party political stunt from the SNP, the Tories and others”.
On the doorstep, Sarwar said, there was “disappointment and anger” about Starmer but also about the SNP government at Holyrood. He said:
Unlike my political opponents, I’ll be honest about failure whenever I see it.
Yes, I have a frustration with the mistakes made by Kier Starmer, that’s why I said what I said back in February. But the opportunity people having this election is to change the government in Scotland.
A vote for me and Scottish Labour is not an endorsement of Kier Starmer, it won’t be used as an endorsement of Kier Starmer. It’s to change the first minister here Scotland.
Labour’s Sam Rushworth opened his speech in the debate by saying he did not think Mandelson should have been appointed ambassador to the US. But he said he would vote against the motion because he thought the referral was “politically motivated”, and he thought it made a “mockery” of the privileges committee process.
This is from Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, commenting on Morgan McSweeney’s evidence to the foreign affairs committee saying that, if Kamala Harris had been elected US president, No 10 would not have chosen Mandelson on the ambassador. (See 11.14am.)
There it is.
Morgan McSweeney confirms the Mandelson appointment was all about Trump. Keir Starmer’s original sin was trying to suck up to Trump.
Stephen Flynn, the SNP leader at Westminster, said that Labour MPs should have realised that Keir Starmer was not fit to be PM on the day he admitted at PMQs that, when he appointed Mandelson as ambassador to the US, he knew that he had maintained a relationship “with the world’s most notorious paedophile and child trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein,” after Epstein’s first conviction.
[Starmer] was not fit because his judgment was flawed and it was wrong. But they chose, they proactively chose to ignore that and to defend him.
Flynn also said, if Labour MPs were confident that Starmer did not mislead the MPs, they should let the inquiry go ahead.
Labour’s Tim Roca did defend the government in his speech. He said that MPs were being asked this afternoon “to make several leaps of faith, one of which is to believe that, just nine days from local and national elections, that we are here not because of a political stunt coordinated by the Conservative party, but to accept that they have turned into a sober, principled set of defenders of parliamentary standards”.
Roca said that, in briefings to the media, Tory sources have open about the fact their goal is not establishing the truth – just holding a vote on a privileges inquiry before the May elections.
In the Commons Simon Hoare (Con) said that, by voting against the motion calling for a privileges committee inquiry, Labour MPs would be “creating the largest albatross to hang around their necks in these closing days as we approach polling day”.
Whipping government MPs to vote against privileges inquiry ‘wrong’ and bad for trust in politics, says Labour’s Emma Lewell
Ben Quinn
Ben Quinn is a Guardian political correspondent.
Forcing Labour MPs to oppose the Tory motion aimed at sparking a probe into Keir Starmer will play into the “terrible narrative” that they are complicit in a cover-up, one of the prime minister’s own backbenchers has said.
Emma Lewell, a leftwing backbencher who spoke immediately after Kemi Badenoch opened the debate, said she shared a feeling with the public of being “let down, disappointed and angry”.
She said:
I feel the way that today’s vote has been handled by the government smacks once again of being out of touch and disconnected from the public mood.
The fact that MPs like me are being whipped into voting against this motion is in my view wrong. It has played into the terrible narrative that there is something to hide and good decent colleagues will be accused of being complicit in a cover-up.
Recent weeks have seen such abuse intensify and ongoing abuse and threats to me and my staff’s safety continues. Tryst has gone and it has been replaced by anger. The already fragile fabric of our democracy is eroding further every day this continues.
Ed Davey joins Badenoch in saying Starmer should be referred to privileges committee
Ben Quinn
Ben Quinn is a Guardian political correspondent.
Kemi Badenoch and Ed Davey have joined forces in the Commons to pile fresh pressure on Keir Starmer as the Tory leader spearheaded a motion aimed at forcing him to face a parliamentary probe over his claims about the vetting of Peter Mandelson.
The Tory leader chided those on the government’s frontbench for forcing backbench Labour MPs to turn out to oppose the motion, which identifies three possible areas where Starmer was accused of having misled parliament.
“They are being whipped today to exonerate him before the facts have even been tested,” Badenoch said of Labour MPs.
Moments earlier, Ed Davey had drawn laughs when he said that he was as “not a fan of Boris Johnson” but at least the Conservative party had not whipped its MPs when Johnson had faced a similar motion in the past.
Badenoch said the prime minister had appointed Mandelson before security vetting was complete in contravention of advice given to him in November by the then cabinet secretary, while his own national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, had described the appointment as “weirdly rushed”.
“We also know that this latest information about the problems with the security vetting did not come from the humble address it came from a leak to the Guardian vetting,” Badenoch added, citing the Guardian’s revelation that Mandelson had not passed his vetting interviews.
“So why should we wait for a never never process that is clearly not happening,” she added, in response to Labour MPs who accused her of mounting a stunt rather than waiting for the release of documents under the humble address process initiated to reveal records about the appointment.
Labour’s Nadia Whittome says she thinks Starmer may have misled MPs, and she will vote for inquiry
In the Commons Nadia Whittome was the fourth speaker in the debate from the Labour benches – and the third Labour MP. (See 2.12pm.)
She said that she would “like nothing more than for us to be focusing on what this government has delivered”, but that achievements were being overshadowed by mistakes, like the appointment of Peter Mandelson.
She said.
I’ve listened to the prime minister’s arguments, and unfortunately, I am yet to be convinced that he has definitively not misled the House, even if inadvertently, because I’m concerned that pressure was put on the Foreign Office regarding managers and appointments given Sir Olly Robbin’s evidence.
She said she thought Starmer should refer himself to the privileges committee. And she said that she would vote for the opposition motion.
Here is Jessica Elgot’s story on Philip Barton’s evidence to the foreign affairs committee this morning.
And here is some Guardian video from her hearing.
Starmer would do better letting privileges inquiry go ahead so he can clear his name, Labour MPs say
In the Commons they are now on the sixth speaker in the debate. The opposition benches have been heavily outgunning the government benches.
Three opposition MPs have already spoken: Kemi Badenoch, who opened the debate; Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader; and David Davis, the former Tory cabinet minister.
Responding from the Labour benches have been Emma Lewell, Gurinder Josan and (speaking now) Karl Turner – who is technically not a Labour MP at the moment, because he has had the whip withdrawn.
Turner is in favour of Starmer being referred to the privileges committee (although he has just said that he thinks Starmer would be exonerated if an inquiry did take place).
While Turner was speaking, the Labour MPs Andy McDonald and John McDonnell both argued that it would be better for Starmer to allow the inquiry to go ahead so that Starmer can clear his name.
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