Brexit champion Nigel Farage and former Tony Blair spin doctor Alastair Campbell have traded verbal blows in a bitter spat around what Sir Keir Starmer’s role was in the Post Office Horizon scandal.
Sir Keir was Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) at the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) between 2008 and 2013. Of the 700 subpostmasters and subpostmistresses wrongfully convicted for crimes such as theft and false accounting, the CPS admitted that it took at least 27 subpostmasters to court. However, that number may rise to 50.
Despite conceding that it wrongfully took postal workers to court between 2001 and 2020, it has so far not confirmed whether it was during Sir Keir’s tenure that the false prosecutions took place.
Of those that were convicted, some 230 served time in prison. The scandal – which is the greatest miscarriage of justice in British history – has been depicted in the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office.
In the wake of the scandal, political pundits have questioned the Leader of the Opposition’s role in it. Responding to those queries, former Director of Communications in the Blair government, Alastair Campbell, implied that the questions about Sir Keir’s role were evidence of a concerted effort on the part of his political enemies to take him down. This, with Labour twenty points clear in the polls in a general election year.
The tough-talking comms guru took to X, formerly Twitter, and wrote: “The Tory/Farage campaign to make Keir Starmer accountable for every case he did or didn’t do as a lawyer, and every decision made or not made while he was DPP only gets to stage 1 because of newspapers that are simply propaganda outlets for the ruling party.”
However, the grandfather of Brexit and president of Reform UK, Nigel Farage, hit back at Mr Campbell – who is now the co-host of a popular podcast with former Tory minister Rory Stewart, The Rest Is Politics.
In response, GB News presenter Farage, said simply: “Sir Keir never stops telling us about his time as DPP. Given that this is the greatest miscarriage of justice ever (and that it happened on his watch), I think that asking questions is very reasonable.”
Despite Mr Farage’s claim that the Post Office scandal happened on Sir Keir’s “watch”, the CPS has yet to confirm that this is the case.
According to The Telegraph CPS spokesman said: “The vast majority of these cases were private prosecutions brought by the Post Office. We’ve worked extensively and identified a small number of CPS cases which involved evidence connected to Horizon. In these cases, we have written to those defendants to disclose information so they could pursue an appeal.”
