Keir Starmer has won a decisive victory against Boris Johnson, the day after the resignation of the Prime Minister. The Labor leader took a calculated risk by promising to resign if fined for breaching the blocking rules. It has now been claimed, too late, because the offender of the blockade law had already defeated himself.
We can observe that Starmer would not have made this promise unless he was confident that he would not be notified of a sanction, but it was certainly a risk; he grabbed it and won the bet. Durham police have concluded that the meeting in the miners’ room in April last year was lawful “because of the application of an exception, i.e., reasonably necessary work”.
So if Johnson were still clinging to the post, Starmer would have a big advantage in next week’s prime minister’s questions. He would have been advised not to milk it himself — no one likes someone who proclaims his own moral virtue — but others could have pointed it out to him, and he could have asked about the crime and mentioned the rule of law.