Keir Starmer once promised to resign as Labour leader if he was found to have broken lockdown rules during a campaign event in Durham.
However, it turns out the former director of public prosecutions and the man labelled “Mr Rules” had a previous brush with police, after a friend revealed he was caught by French officers illegally selling ice-creams on a Mediterranean beach.
John Murray, a university friend of Starmer, told Politico’s Westminster Insider podcast that the pair had gone to the south of France as students after seeing an advertisement claiming they could earn hundreds of pounds selling ice-creams on the French Riviera.
But Murray said the friends made little money and found to their cost that the practice was illegal. But although Murray was arrested, Starmer appears to have got away with merely having his ice-creams confiscated.
Murray told the podcast: “We spent a month … as almost beach bums, selling ice-creams to tourists, and making about four francs a day.
“The place was overrun with other beach sellers, because they’d all been suckered into thinking they’d earn hundreds of pounds a day. And then we found out it was actually not legal. So we spent our time kind of avoiding being arrested.”
He added: “To be honest, I did get arrested. But all that happened was you had your ice-creams confiscated, got a receipt, then had to walk back to the beach without your flip-flops.”
When asked if Starmer had also been arrested, he said: “I can’t say that … I think he probably had his ice-creams confiscated. It was a minor misdemeanour.”
A Labour spokesperson said: “We are happy to make clear that no arrests were made, or even names taken, and that the only loss of liberty occurred to some cut-price ice-creams.”
Starmer has built a political reputation as a strait-laced lawyer, contrasting his style with the free-wheeling, rule-breaking former prime minister Boris Johnson.
That reputation threatened to unravel last year when he was accused of breaking lockdown rules by eating a takeaway and drinking beer during a campaign event in Durham. The Labour leader promised to resign if police found he had broken any rules, but was spared that outcome when officers took no further action.
The anecdote from Starmer’s student days is a rare insight into a less buttoned-up side to the Labour leader. It is also a sign that as the country gets closer to next year’s election, scrutiny of his personal life and his past is likely to increase.
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