Politics LIVE: Starmer used Labour donor’s £18m penthouse for Covid broadcast urging Britons to stay home

Sir Keir Starmer used a Labour donor’s £18million penthouse to urge the public to work from home in a broadcast during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The video was broadcast five days after the Conservative government announced new guidance aimed at limiting the spread of a new strain of Covid-19, which urged people to work from home where possible.

Guido Fawkes reports the Christmas message was filmed in Lord Alli’s flat in December 2021, when Sir Keir was leader of the opposition. The room was identified from the shelves behind Sir Keir that had previously appeared in a video from inside Lord Alli’s flat.

It is the latest political calamity for the Prime Minister after he was forced to defend repeatedly using the flat owned by the Labour peer while campaigning to enter No 10.

In the message, the Labour leader urged people to resist the temptation to go against the advice over the Christmas season and work from home where they can.

He said: “Of course, I understand that sticking to the rules can be inconvenient, but stick to the rules we must…It would be easy to let the festivities we’ve all been looking forward to divert us from our national duty.”

The Prime Minister’s press secretary said that no Covid rules had been broken by the use of the flat for the broadcast.

Asked whether Sir Keir was “completely confident” that all the rules at the time had been obeyed, she replied: “Correct.”

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Former Scottish Labour leader calls for Starmer to ‘do deal’ with SNP on second referendum

A report co-authored by Kezia Dugdale, who led the party from 2015 to 2017, called for an agreement based on the UK’s position on Irish reunification, placing an obligation on the UK Government to allow a new independence vote if leaving the UK had “sustained” majority support.

The report said: “We should place a legal mandate on the Secretary of State for Scotland to determine when a second independence referendum will take place.

“That’s not on their whim or a party political position. If that public opinion is sustained and in support of independence, they must… give the Scottish Parliament the power to determine how that referendum would run.”