STEPHEN GLOVER: Why DID the Labour Party mislead this newspaper on Beergate?

The cover-up is invariably worse than the lie. 

Often the lie is relatively insignificant, while the cover-up grows bigger and bigger. 

The Labour Party has finally admitted that its deputy leader, Angela Rayner, was present at an event on April 30 last year when Sir Keir Starmer was filmed enjoying a beer with officials. 

Indoor socialising was then banned under Covid laws. When the Mail asked Labour on January 14 this year whether Mrs Rayner had been at the event in Durham, it was emphatically told: ‘Angela wasn’t there’. 

This, we now know, was untrue. Why did Labour mislead this newspaper? It could have been a straightforward error, as party officials maintain. 

But if it was ‘a mistake made in good faith’, as they assert, why didn’t they set the record straight earlier? 

Did they deny that Mrs Rayner was there in order to dampen down speculation that there was a full-blown party rather than a break for refreshments during a working session, which is what Sir Keir has claimed? 

It’s not easy to see why the deputy leader’s presence made it more of a party than it already was. 

More likely, Labour simply wanted to distance Mrs Rayner from her leader’s imprudent beer drinking and avoid her getting ensnared in the same controversy. Whatever the explanation, Labour said Angela Rayner wasn’t present even though she was. 

It is incumbent on journalists to try to find out whether the falsehood was a simple mistake, or whether it conceals something more sinister. 

Which brings me to the BBC. I don’t at all complain that the Labour-supporting Daily Mirror and Guardian don’t appear very interested in this story. 

That is their business. But when our powerful public service broadcaster initially virtually ignores today’s revelations in the Mail — as it showed little interest when the film of Sir Keir swigging from a beer bottle emerged in January — there is cause for complaint. 

The BBC is supposed to be even-handed and impartial. Nearly three weeks ago, Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak were fined for attending an impromptu birthday party in No.10. 

Auntie went into hyper-drive, though the PM hadn’t eaten any cake and stayed for less than ten minutes. 

The hapless Chancellor had merely wandered into the Cabinet Room slightly early for a meeting. 

All right — they broke laws which they had promulgated and so deserved their punishment. 

In fact, let me say that I am very far from regarding ‘Partygate’ as a storm in a tea cup and believe that Boris Johnson still has many serious questions to answer about his conduct and veracity. 

Nonetheless, if the BBC can devote countless hours of airtime to the Prime Minister’s birthday party, one would hope that it could summon more interest when it is revealed that, contrary to what Labour has previously stated, Angela Rayner was in the same building where Sir Keir Starmer drank his beer. 

Yet, at the time of writing, the Beeb has underplayed the story, I believe deliberately. During its three-hour flagship Today programme on Radio 4 today, there was a brief item about the affair just after 6.30am. 

Belatedly, the BBC’s website did get round to carrying a piece about Labour’s falsehood, and the story made an appearance, usually low down, on some news bulletins. 

A smug Sir Keir Starmer was treated to a soft interview by the Beeb. 

Imagine what would happen if The Guardian or Daily Mirror revealed that the Tory Party had wrongly claimed that the Deputy Prime Minister, Dominic Raab, hadn’t been present at an event at which Boris Johnson had swigged from a beer bottle. 

Why, the Beeb would have cleared the decks — and rightly so. 

This is yet one more example of the BBC’s double standards. Anti-Tory bias is fundamental to its DNA, though its journalists will reach for the smelling salts if ever they are accused of favouring Labour.

Every alleged misdemeanour of Auntie’s hate figure, Boris Johnson, is examined in exhaustive detail. 

By contrast, Labour tends to be indulged, as it was during Tony Blair’s first six years of office until the Iraq War, when his lies, and those of his egregious sidekick, Alastair Campbell, became too much even for Auntie to stomach. 

Angela Rayner has also received an easy ride this week from the BBC after The Mail on Sunday alleged that she had joked with Tory MPs about crossing and uncrossing her legs to distract Boris Johnson in the Commons. 

Her contention that the article was full of ‘desperate, perverted smears’ was swallowed whole by the Beeb. 

Nor has our public service broadcaster shown much, if any, interest in the four Tory MPs who have come forward over recent days to support the account in The Mail on Sunday and contradict Mrs Rayner’s version of events. 

Might it be that the deputy leader of the Labour Party (who, remember, once described Tories as ‘scum’) is not entirely straightforward and isn’t to be believed automatically whenever she opens her mouth and irrespective of whatever she says? 

Why was it so emphatically denied by Labour — and why was the denial subsequently not corrected — that she had been at the same event as Sir Keir Starmer on April 30 last year? 

As for the sanctimonious Sir Keir — a man who blithely accuses Boris Johnson of lying — perhaps he would be good enough to tell us when he was first aware that a misleading account of that occasion had been supplied by a Labour Party official. 

Furthermore, does he really contend that drinking beer and eating pizza, as he did on that night in Durham, is legally and morally more defensible than what the PM and the Chancellor did — which was not to eat cake? 

Sir Keir is fortunate that Durham Police — unlike the Metropolitan Police, who have Boris riggling under their microscope — have a policy of not taking retrospective action against Covid lawbreakers. They should think again. 

Richard Holden, a local Tory MP, wrote to the Deputy Chief Constable of Durham, urging him to reopen an investigation into the Labour leader’s behaviour and to take a good look at Mrs Rayner’s. 

The Met should also examine allegations that Sir Keir tucked in to chocolate and lemon cakes on his birthday in his office in September 2020, when official Covid rules advised that such parties should not take place if it was ‘difficult to maintain social-distancing’. 

Needless to say, Labour doesn’t intend to throw any light on these puzzling events. 

Sir Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner will continue to try to give the preposterous impression that they inhabit a morally superior universe to Boris Johnson. And the BBC, we can be certain, has absolutely no intention of challenging them.