Sir Keir’s just wrapped up his high-profile speech on Labour’s plans to deal with Britain’s energy crisis, and it almost went without a hitch.
Unfortunately for the Labour leader, one journalist spoiled his big day when using their question to call the Labour leader out for a major blunder.
Ahead of the major gathering in Edinburgh, journalists were promised they would be driven to the speech on a “hydrogen powered bus”, set to pick the press pack up from Edinburgh Waverly Station.
The media corps was surprised therefore to arrive in Scotland’s capital and told to board an emissions-pumping diesel bus instead.
The double-decker transport was provided by Lothian buses, who while deploying hydrogen powered coaches on their routes seemingly couldn’t stump one up for Sir Keir’s big day.
The Scottish Guardian editor Severin Carrell called the party out, saying while he may love Lothian buses, “Keir Starmer’s clean energy strategy it ain’t”.
35 minutes later and journalists then reported that the bus had become hopelessly lost, and driving in the wrong direction.
A Daily Mail reported ended up having to direct the Labour diesel bus to the venue on the driver’s behalf.
Keir Starmer and Labour leader Anas Sarwar were clearly embarrassed when the Times flagged the problems.
The Times informed the Labour leaders about the chaotic day, saying: “This morning journalists were promised a hydrogen bus to bring them down here today – in fact what was waiting for them was a diesel vehicle with a driver who didn’t know where we were going”.
“Given that and given Labour appears to have spent the last few weeks squabbling over the details of this after what Anas called an ‘unhelpful briefing’ to the Sunday Times a few weeks ago, why should anyone trust Labour to be across the details to make these ambitious plans work.”
Mr Sarwar tried laughing the chaos off, responding: “There’s a hydrogen bus company here so I’m sure we’ll talk to them and make sure we’re recruiting more hydrogen buses across our public transport infrastructure”.
Responding to the farce, Tory vice chair Lee Anderson told Express.co.uk: “So Sir Slippery’s latest gaffe has backfired as he attempted to appease the green lobby by travelling to the venue on a hydrogen powered bandwagon.
“It turns out it was a diesel-powered bus with no sat nav.
“If you are going to jump on every bandwagon that passes at least make sure you know what direction you are travelling in.”
