Keir Starmer's office decline to comment on claims Jeremy Corbyn blocked him from taking second job with law firm
Previous reports suggest he chose to turn the job down.
A spokesperson for Keir Starmer declined to comment on Thursday on claims that the Labour leader was blocked by Jeremy Corbyn from taking a second job with a top law firm, while in the Shadow Cabinet.
Starmer told Sky News this week that “paid consultancies [for MPs] ought to go.”
When questioned about reports in 2017 that he had been in talks with the legal firm Mishcon de Reya while he was Shadow Brexit Secretary, Starmer said that “there was [a] discussion, nothing happened.”
However, Corbyn’s biographer Alex Nunns claimed on Twitter on Wednesday that rather than choosing to turn down the offer, Starmer’s proposed role with Mishcon de Reya had in fact been blocked by Corbyn.
Nunns claims that “the matter was raised at a meeting of the shadow cabinet, where ‘Jeremy very politely reminded Keir what Labour Party policy [on second jobs] was.”
Asked by Folded about the claims on Thursday, a spokesperson for Starmer declined to comment.
The allegation came after Starmer called on Boris Johnson’s government to place greater restrictions on the second jobs held by MPs, following the resignation of Owen Paterson and the ongoing allegations of corruption against Conservative MPs.
Starmer told Sky News that “many, many years ago, back I think in 2015, the Labour Party said that paid consultancies ought to go…
“So it seems to me that's an obvious change that we ought to make and we should make that [change] straight away.”
Starmer appears to have watered down Labour’s position on second jobs from Labour’s 2019 general election pledge of a ban on all second jobs for MPs, with “limited exemptions to maintain professional registrations like nursing.”
A spokesperson for Johnson this week ruled out an “outright ban” on second jobs.
However, Johnson’s government is now actively considering an “eye-catching” proposal on placing some restrictions on second jobs for MPs, a senior Conservative figure close to the discussions told me earlier this week.
The plan is causing uneasiness among some Conservative MPs who are disproportionately more likely to have additional earnings outside of parliament.