Keir Starmer shamed Boris Johnson with the example of the sacrifice made by others while disgraced Matt Hancock was breaking the covid rules he set.
The Labour leader cornered the Tory Prime Minister over his attempt to claim credit for the resignation of the Health Secretary when he confronted him in the Commons.
Starmer drew the contrast between Hancock’s rule breaking and people who had stuck to the rules even with dying relatives.
At Prime Minister’s Questions Starmer said the PM was the only person in Britain not to think that Hancock should be sacked on the spot when pictures emerged of him in a clinch with an aide in his Government offices.
On Friday the Prime Minister’s spokesman said the matter was “closed” but after Hancock bowed to public outrage over breaking the covid rules Johnson attempted to boast that he had been replaced swiftly on Saturday.
As Johnson tried to divert the debate onto the roll-out of vaccines the Labour leader said millions of people did follow the rules while Johnson defended those who broke them.
Starmer raised the case of Ollie Bibby, 27, who died of leukaemia in hospital a day before Matt Hancock was filmed kissing a colleague, prompting his resignation as health secretary.
He was only allowed one family member with him as he was dying and Starmer said Ollie’s mother was livid.
Johnson said: “We all share the grief and the pain of millions of people up and down the country who have endured the privations that this country has been through in order to get the coronavirus pandemic under control and that is why we had a change of health secretary the day after the story appeared.”
But Johnson hit the wrong tone when he added: “Instead of focusing on stuff going on within the Westminster bubble we are focusing on rolling out that vaccine.”
Starmer said: This morning I spoke to Ollie’s mum about the awful circumstances she and her family have been through.
“She told me Prime Minister that every day she watched the press conferences and she hung onto every word that Government ministers said so she would know what her family could and couldn’t do, and then they followed the rules. This is not the Westminster bubble.”
“She told me that for her and her family this case isn’t closed and she speaks for millions of people. I ask the Prime Minister to withdraw that when he gets up, it’s the wrong response to Ollie’s case.”
Starmer added: “Every time it’s the same old story. Isn’t it the case that while the British people are doing everything asked of them, it’s one rule for them and another rule for everybody else?”
“There’s a pattern here. When Dominic Cummings broke the rules by driving to Barnard Castle, the Prime Minister backed him. When the Housing Secretary unlawfully approved a billion pound property deal for a Tory donor, the Prime Minister backed him.”
“When the Home Secretary broke the ministerial code, the Prime Minister backed her. And when the Health Secretary broke Covid rules, the Prime Minister tried and wanted to back him too.”
