The morning after Keir Starmer was barracked by anti-vaxxers and accused of being a “paedophile protector”, there was surprisingly little sympathy for the Labour leader in Talacre Town Green, in the heart of his Holborn and St Pancras constituency.
Starmer plays football in the park most weeks, but there was no sign of the supporters who gave him almost a 28,000 majority at the last election. “If I see him playing I’ll boo him,” said Tony Walters, 62, who was out walking Coco, his staffordshire bull terrier.
With no prompting about the Jimmy Savile slur, Walters said: “No politicians are any good – Starmer couldn’t even prosecute Jimmy Savile, and Jimmy Savile abused a lot of people. It was all covered up.”
When it was pointed out that it was false for Boris Johnson to claim Starmer failed to prosecute Savile when he was director of public prosecutions, Walters replied: “Well, how did Jimmy Savile get off then?”
Walters, a former cabby turned full-time carer, said he was suspicious of all politicians. “I picked up a few politicians when I was a taxi driver and I used to tell them the government is corrupt, and they would laugh at me. They haven’t got any common sense. Johnson hasn’t got common sense, he may be educated but common sense is one thing he ain’t got.”
Only one in five people in the park were aware that the Labour leader had been mobbed on Monday by angry protesters, some of whom were shouting Savile’s name. It was Johnson’s false Savile claim that appeared to have had more impact with Starmer’s constituents.
Eddie Byrne, 62, a retired hotel manager, said he had read online about Starmer’s treatment on Monday. He asked: “Is it true? That would be my first question: did he fail to prosecute Jimmy Savile, because Jimmy Savile got away with stuff for so long. And a lot of stuff has come up since about what was known at the time when Starmer was head of public prosecutions. If it’s true then he shouldn’t be the leader of a political party.”
Byrne remained suspicious even when it was explained that Savile’s case was not Starmer’s responsibility. “You see, that’s passing the buck. They’re so good at that – they all blame each other,” he said.
But Byrne was in no doubt that Johnson had deliberately made the Savile allegation to divert attention from criticism over lockdown parties. He said: “Johnson was getting all the aggro about parties, so he tried to deflect on to Starmer. All he did was take a little pressure off himself. That was the whole idea of the Savile comments.”
Andy Apostolu, 65, the owner of the nearby Andy’s cafe, agreed. “Everything is Boris Johnson’s fault at the moment, which is why he said Jimmy Savile.”
Preparing a double order of bacon and sausage sandwiches, Apostolu added: “He was trying to get out of what he’s being doing for the last two years with the parties and everything. I don’t think it was Starmer’s fault that Savile got off.”
One of Andy’s regular customers, Louise Lambe, chipped in to express anger at Johnson’s remarks. “What happened to Starmer is directly a result of what Boris Johnson said last week,” the 38-year-old dressmaker said.
But she thought the Labour leader could be doing more to attack Johnson. “Starmer seems like the only adult in the room but I think he holds back a little bit – he could be tearing into Johnson a lot more than he does.”
