Labour blind spot for scandal on show as Tories exploit murky Haigh affair | Politics News

“They’re all the same” is a political narrative that can sink governments.

It’s a narrative Sir Keir Starmer vowed to prove wrong – promising a break from the psychodrama of the past.

But it’s a narrative undermined by stories such as the one we revealed on Thursday: that months before Louise Haigh became an MP, she was pleading guilty in a south London court.

Within 12 hours, she had resigned as transport secretary.

Or rather, the prime minister and those around him had decided it was best she stood down – and so she did.

Such a swift move to jettison a senior government figure is evidence of sharper political decision-making.

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Had Downing Street stood by their cabinet minister, more damage would have been inflicted by further revelations around a photo Ms Haigh is said to have provided to the police of her allegedly stolen phone and the suggestion that calls were made from the handset in the hours after the reported theft.

That said, there is also evidence that some failed to spot the danger lurking in this decade-old story.

Sky News first approached Ms Haigh’s team about the incident weeks before it was made public.

We received no reply.

Days after this, we went to the media office at Labour HQ, but no substantial response was forthcoming.

It was only last week – after we had verified further details relating to the conviction and assured government sources that we would be publishing them – that a statement was received.

Despite numerous e-mails and phone calls and multiple visits to magistrates courts around London, nothing of substance has ever been received from the courts service regarding the listing or outcome of the case.

At one court, it was suggested that a record had been found but after confirming this related to a “sitting MP”, we were told it would be referred to a more senior manager before any response was sent.

Other agencies maintained they could not share anything because the conviction was classified as spent.

So with facts hard to come by through official channels, what exactly was known in government?

The given reason from Downing Street sources for Ms Haigh’s “resignation” was the gaps between what she had told Sir Keir Starmer about the incident and what emerged on Thursday.

Her allies dispute this, saying she set it all out to the party’s top brass back in 2020.

Big unanswered question

This brings us to a big and as yet still unanswered question – and one pressed by Kemi Badenoch in the Commons on Wednesday – what did the prime minister know about his transport secretary’s conviction when he gave her a seat at the cabinet table in July?

Government sources are not being explicit, but putting together the nods, winks and non-denials, the likeliest endpoint appears to be that Sir Keir knew about the fact of the conviction, but did not know all the circumstances around it.

This inevitably leads to questions around how much he was told, but also the extent to which this former prosecutor and those around him made enquiries into the claims.

But there is another reason – outside of Louise Haigh’s apparent 2020 admission – why Sir Keir would, or should, have known what happened.

Between 2021 and 2022, his chief of staff was someone who worked alongside Ms Haigh at Aviva at the time of the “stolen phone” incident.

Tories ‘punch the bruise’

As for where this murky affair goes now.

The Tories will continue to punch the bruise and try to make this a question of poor judgement on the part of the prime minister.

In response, there’s some evidence of Labour starting to adopt a more muscular strategy.

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In the chamber on Wednesday, Sir Keir pointed out that two former Tory prime ministers had broken COVID rules and received fines.

A Labour source followed up saying “if the Conservatives want to have a row about the extent of their criminality while in Downing Street, that’s fine by us”.

In the tit-for-tat world of Westminster, there may be logic in trying to paint the Tories as the bigger crooks.

But among an exhausted electorate sick of scandal and point scoring, it might look like something else.

“They’re all the same.”