'Mr Speaker I gently remind her that two of her predecessors had convictions for breaking Covid rules.'
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch endured a humiliating PMQs this afternoon, after her latest attacks on the Labour government backfired.
Badenoch used the recent resignation of former Transport Secretary Louise Haigh to attack the Labour party. Haigh resigned as transport secretary after it emerged she pleaded guilty to a fraud offence a decade ago.
Haigh has admitted telling police in 2013, while she was working for Aviva, that she had lost her work mobile phone in a mugging, but later found it had not been taken. After she turned the phone on, it ‘triggered police attention’ after which she was called in for questioning and advised not to comment by her solicitor, before the matter was taken to magistrates’ court for making a false report to police.
Haigh said: “Under the advice of my solicitor I pleaded guilty – despite the fact this was a genuine mistake from which I did not make any gain.”
She was given a conditional discharge by magistrates, following the incident which happened before she became an MP. She disclosed the incident when she was appointed to Starmer’s shadow cabinet in 2020, though she has never spoken about it publicly.
At PMQs earlier today, Badenoch said: “The country needs conviction politicians, not politicians with convictions.”
Labour leader Starmer replied: “Mr Speaker I gently remind her that two of her predecessors had convictions for breaking Covid rules.”
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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