The case against Keir Starmer as Labour leader:
He was found by a select committee to have restricted the scope of the 2012
phone hacking investigation, which saw hardly anyone convicted, despite
reams of evidence. After the extent of the crimes were revealed, surely a
broader scope and more transparency was the order of the day?
When the SNP proposed an investigation into Blair’s apparent lying in the run
up to the Invasion of Iraq – bolstered by findings from the Chilcot report – Sir
Keir voted against it. Why?
He worked tirelessly to secure Labour’s support for the Investigatory Power Bill,
which expanded state surveillance and authorised the bulk collection of digital
communications - something Edward Snowden warned against.
As DPP, Sir Keir tempered his love of liberty by fast-tracking the extradition of
Julian Assange (a process now making its way through the courts). He flouted
legal precedents by ***advising Swedish lawyers NOT to question Assange in
Britain: a decision that prolonged the latter’s legal purgatory****, denied
closure to his accusers in Sweden, and sealed his fate before a US show trial.
Leaked emails from August 2012 show that, ***when the Swedish legal team
expressed hesitancy about keeping Assange’s case open, Sir Keir’s office
replied: ‘Don’t you dare get cold feet’.*** - he believes that people who expose
war crimes should face prosecution, while people who perpetrate them
(investigation into Blair’s lies) should not.
Stop and think about what that means for a moment.
He altered legal guidelines so that those improperly claiming benefits could be
charged under the Fraud Act, which carries a maximum sentence of ten years
(Emily Thornberry argued it should be increased to fourteen). Sir Keir also
removed the financial threshold for such cases, allowing the government to
waste endless resources arresting and incarcerating people who had claimed
minimal amounts of money. No similar moves were made to change guidelines
on prosecuting tax evaders and avoiders whose actions lose the UK billions in
tax revenue each year - exorbitant amounts compared to amounts lost through
benefit fraud. He said “I am determined to see a clampdown on those who flout
the system” - Never mind that fraud was estimated to account for only 0.7% of
the welfare budget, and will cost more to recoup than was lost. Never mind that
the tories made the benefit system more complex when they took office, which
has led to many people over and under claiming what they are owed. £12bn is
lost annually through corporate tax avoidance alone.
He drew up rules that gave police officers more power to arrest demonstrators,
in an attempt to crack down on ‘significant disruption’ after the 2010 student
protests. Appended to these instructions was a warning: ‘criminals bent on
disruption and disorder…will not get an easy ride’. As commentators noted at
the time, the vagueness of these guidelines equipped police with the authority
to jail anyone wearing a scarf (since it could be used to ‘prevent identification’)
or carrying a placard (which has on various occasions been classified as
‘weapon’), while the ban on body protection criminalised attempts to defend
oneself from police violence.
Sir Keir’s stern treatment of protesters tallied with his response to the London
riots, when he stressed the necessity of rapid sentencing, and made a personal
appearance in court to praise the judges who were handing down harsh
penalties. His predecessor as DPP meanwhile reflected that the punishments
marked a ‘collective loss of proportion’, and an abnegation of ‘humanity or
justice’.
Sir Keir decided to abstain on the Tory Welfare Bill: a series of drastic cuts to
social spending that disproportionately affected women, children and the
disabled.
As well as taking ‘tough stances’ in the courtroom, Sir Keir’s CPS advised
undercover police officers on how to infiltrate left-wing campaign groups via a
‘domestic extremism’ specialist. When it was alleged that, as part of this
operation, numerous undercover agents had broken the law, given false
evidence in court, and formed sexual relationships with activists in order to spy
on them, the CPS launched an investigation into covert policing that was widely
considered to be a whitewash. It admitted no systemic failings on the part of
the CPS, offered no apology to the victims, and declined to re-open cases in
which undercover policework may have led to wrongful convictions. There was
no redress for the countless miscarriages of justice caused by this ‘anti-
extremism’ crusade – which focused primarily on environmentalists and animal
rights advocates – ***nor did he bring charges against officers who had
manipulated women into sex***. This is a far cry from the feminist credentials
talked up in his campaign video; though it would be unreasonable to expect
more from a man who, in 2010, dismissed the concerns of Women Against
Rape, a group that met with him to discuss the treatment of women who are
pressured into withdrawing sexual assault allegations and then subsequently
prosecuted for lying (as in the recent Cyprus trial).
DPP apologises for failure to charge Savile while he was alive
Sean O’Neill
Saturday January 12 2013, 12.01am, The Times
Jimmy Savile: police and prosecutors were unnecessarily cautious
PA
Jimmy Savile could and should have been prosecuted for child sex offences
when he was still alive after a series of complaints were made between 2007
and 2009, the Director of Public Prosecutions has said.
But police and prosecutors were unnecessarily cautious in their approach to the
cases and decided not to press charges against the former BBC presenter.
Keir Starmer, QC, the DPP, apologised yesterday for the failure to prosecute
Savile and said that the case represented a “watershed moment” in the
approach to both child sex abuse inquiries and other sexual assault allegations.
He said he was ordering a more rigorous approach to allegations of child abuse
as a result of the failures over both Savile and a series of street-grooming cases
exposed
