Between a speech and a snore

Starmer accused of breaking lockdown rules for hiring voice coach during COVID

Prime Minister Sir Kier Starmer hired actress Leonie Mellinger in December 2020 when he was Labour leader and when London was in Tier 4 restrictions...

Conservative former minister Richard Holden has written to Sir Keir asking whether he thinks he was breaching the law.

A Labour spokesman said: "The rules were followed at all times."

It is understood Sir Keir was working at the time with a small team that was preparing him for a response to Mr Johnson's Brexit deal, with a TV camera filming it all.


Oftentimes they were asleep, but occasionally might be heard talking together, in voices between a speech and a snore, and with that lack of energy that distinguishes the occupants of alms-houses, and all other human beings who depend for subsistence on charity, on monopolized labour, or anything else but their own independent exertions.

Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Scarlet Letter (1850)