The media storm around Keir Starmer’s lockdown “voice coaching” was “revolting”, inaccurate and misogynistic, the woman at the heart of the row has told the Guardian.
Leonie Mellinger said parts of the British press had dismissed and minimised her role as a key part of Starmer’s team and used it as a “political weapon”. She added that it was “absolutely wrong” to describe her as a voice coach, and explained that she had worked on Starmer’s emotional connection when speaking in public, not on his voice or elocution.
“I was particularly offended by some of the misogynistic angles that some of the press took, and the ‘nudge nudge, wink wink innuendo’, which was deeply offensive and would never have happened had I been a man,” she said. “I think these little acts of misogyny that happen every day are part of the [wider] problem we have with violence against women and girls [and] I felt it was important that I should speak out about it.”
The row erupted this month after it emerged that Mellinger had travelled to London in December 2020 to work as part of Starmer’s team during the Covid crisis. Labour said all rules had been followed, but a spokesperson for the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, said it “was a clear breach” and that Badenoch thought police should investigate.
“I think the situation was made into a political weapon,” said Mellinger. Referring to the Partygate scandal, when parties were held in No 10, including on the eve of the funeral of Prince Philip, she added: “The criticism from the Conservatives, given what they were up to during that period, is kind of laughable.”
Mellinger said she was “aghast” at the furore around her work with the then leader of the opposition, which snowballed after she gave an interview for the book Get In, a history of the Labour party under Starmer.
She told the authors about her work with Starmer, describing her “blunt” appraisal of an early speech when she started working with him in 2017. Asked now for her appraisal of Starmer’s communication skills, she said: “I think, like most of my clients, he found being in the unnatural space would take out what he naturally had when he was relaxed.” But he listened carefully, implemented advice immediately and had improved significantly, she added. “He doesn’t have a big ego, and he will do whatever it takes to be the best he can be, and that’s why he put the work in. I was incredibly impressed by his dedication.”
Despite being happy with the interview that was serialised in the Sunday Times at the start of February, she was blindsided by the “surreal” coverage that followed, she said. The former actor’s role helping Starmer during the lockdown was referred to as a “juicy snippet of scandal”, while she was compared to Tony and Cherie Blair’s controversial “lifestyle coach” Carole Caplin.
Mellinger trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama and in her earlier career as an actor she starred in the 1981 film Memoirs of a Survivor alongside Julie Christie and worked for the Royal Shakespeare Company as Lavinia in Titus Andronicus with Patrick Stewart. But one article claimed to have “revealed” her “racy past”, which centred on the fact that she was once married to the star of the “Confessions …” movies, Robin Askwith. “They wanted to make it into this salacious story,” she said.
On the day the article was published Mellinger was at a family party to celebrate her mother’s 102nd birthday. “I was actually celebrating this wonderful event with my mother, and then was slightly horrified when I started to see things coming up,” she said. “Some of the things that were being said were defamatory, I would say, and quite revolting. It was really awful to be on the receiving end of that.”
She was inundated with media requests and for “explanations” about how her lockdown meeting with Starmer was within the rules, with innuendoes made about her across social media platforms.
“I am somebody who very much believes in speaking out; I have a podcast called The Courage to Speak. [But] I felt at the time I couldn’t say anything, because it was only going to stoke the fire,” she said. “That was deeply frustrating.”
Mellinger now hopes that talking about her experience may encourage people to take care when describing the work of professional women and “not to diminish it because they’re a woman”. The coverage has also had some positives: the coach, who set up her company in 2003, said she had also received inquiries from potential new clients.
Asked if the experience had left her a little bruised, she replied: “I don’t feel like a victim, I really don’t. I have a voice, and I shall use it for good. There are many everyday examples of misogyny and sexism. It’s exhausting, but we have to keep calling it out.”
