Keir Starmer has denied breaking strict Covid lockdown regulations by meeting his voice coach in late 2020.
At a Nato press conference in Brussels, Sir Keir said “all rules were followed”.
Asked, “Did you break lockdown rules, prime minister?”, he replied: “Of course not.”
The Conservatives have said the Labour leader has “serious questions to answer” after he met Leonie Mellinger at the height of Covid restrictions.
On Christmas Eve that year, while London was under tier 4 pandemic regulations, the PM sought the actor’s advice to respond to Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal, according to a new book.
The Sunday Times reported as part of a serialisation of Get In, by journalists Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund, that she qualified for “key worker” status and visited Labour Party headquarters wearing a face covering.
Tory MP Richard Holden has written to the PM asking him to say whether he thinks it was a breach of the law, as London and the South East were under regional restrictions at the time, and asking him to appoint an independent investigator.
Labour has insisted that “the rules were followed at all times”.
Sir Keir relied for five years on the actor and communications skills coach to improve his public speaking and interview performances, the book reports.
Ms Mellinger described in the book how she counselled the then leader of the opposition when he considered resigning in the wake of the 2021 Hartlepool by-election.
Ms Mellinger, who has acted alongside Sir Patrick Stewart at the Royal Shakespeare Company, was recruited to work for Sir Keir in 2017, when he was still Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow Brexit secretary.
In one of their first meetings, following a speech he had delivered in Brighton, Ms Mellinger feared she had been too candid in telling Sir Keir: “I don’t think it was as good as it could be.”
But she was then invited to Westminster for a debrief on the speech, describing how the work was then “very intense” in the build-up to his 2020 leadership race.
In the extract from the book, Ms Mellinger said: “As soon as the cameras were on, or he would be up in front of people with the autocue, he didn’t really speak with them. So I was working with him on how to emotionally connect, because if the speaker doesn’t emotionally connect with themselves, they cannot bring words to life, and they cannot expect to connect with the audience.
“He took it extremely seriously, and he was fantastic to work with. He was totally open to receiving this guidance, and extremely quick to take the notes, so I would then work with him on scripts and help him bring the words off the page.”
The coach became a close confidant, with Ms Mellinger revealing how he “really wasn’t having a good time at all” after the humiliating defeat in Hartlepool, which saw him tell aides he was quitting.
Mr Holden has previously raised questions about the PM’s conduct during lockdown, including Sir Keir’s attendance at a Labour Party meeting in Durham in April 2021, as he joined a local election campaign.
A police investigation, dubbed Beergate, found neither Sir Keir nor his deputy Angela Rayner had breached Covid rules.
