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Keir Starmer’s real role in the Jimmy Savile saga

Credit: Getty

February 3, 2022 - 4:00pm

Earlier today, Boris Johnson’s key aide Munira Mirza resigned over his accusation that Keir Starmer had failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile. She is the latest to express outrage about this “scurrilous slur”. 

The claim has been widely ‘debunked’ by ‘fact checkers’. As the fact check normally goes: it was true that Savile was questioned by police and then released without charge, in 2009. But while Starmer was head of the CPS at the time, he wasn’t directly involved in that decision, so Johnson’s allegation is ‘FALSE’.  Yet in what is effectively a debate about executive culpability, it both is and it isn’t. 

Starmer senses the wind is in his sails. So, he returned to the fray to announce that the PM was “parroting the conspiracy theories of violent fascists to try and score cheap political points”. It seems as though the Prime Minister agrees: just a few hours ago, he apologised for the remarks.

Starmer is indeed in the crosshairs of conspiracy theories which include that he failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile while in charge of the CPS. In and of itself, that allegation is not entirely invented, but of course, the dark internet versions do also often go on to announce his links to Jeffrey Epstein, often via something called the ’Trilateral Commission’, an international free-trading organisation founded by a Rockerfeller, that has become the lodestar of much modern conspiracy narratives. 

Starmer finds himself magnetised into a network of villains who are even accused of being involved in Satanic paedophile cults. The Clintons and their connections to the supposed Pizzagate are the alphas of this wave; QAnon threw many more names on that stack; Epstein’s real-life pederasty has allowed the tentacles to spread further (and his vague proximity to Starmer is a decent enough hook). Effectively, this is just a low-wattage Anglicisation of Pizzagate. 

Sir Keir makes an unlikely antichrist, but every generation gets the Satanic paedophile cultist it deserves. Yet it also couldn’t have happened to anyone more deserving. In a kind of Mandela Effect moment, Boris has remembered the right guy, but the wrong crime. It was the fallout from Savile that led Starmer’s CPS into a ‘believe all victims’ mentality.

Almost immediately, in the febrile post-Savile moment, this led to the Carl Beech case. Beech was the serial fantasist, whose patently absurd claims about a paedophile ring of prominent Tory politicians wasted many hundreds of hours of police time. Sir Leon Brittan went to his grave, unaware that the allegations against him were to be dropped — and had been spread by a man who was himself a paedophile. 

Starmer might have known nothing about Savile in 2009, but in thought, word and letter, he set the tone for a figure like Beech to emerge. Now that he is starring in his own conspiracy, perhaps he will remember to believe all his own alleged victims.


Gavin Haynes is a journalist and former editor-at-large at Vice.

@gavhaynes

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Stephen Walshe
Stephen Walshe
2 years ago

Why is Keir Starmer’s record as DPP off limits for polite society? He wants to be PM, and this is the only senior role he has ever held. It is stretching credulity to assert that a political appointee, with political ambitions of his own, would not have taken an interest in the decision around prosecuting such a well known figure. Very striking that he would so readily smear anyone who raises what was clearly a very poor decision on his watch as “violent fascists”.

Last edited 2 years ago by Stephen Walshe
Harry Child
Harry Child
2 years ago
Reply to  Stephen Walshe

My credulity was stretch to breaking point when I learned that Alison Levitt QC, Starmer’s principal legal advisor was responsible for the review. I am sure she did her job responsibly but surely a review of this seriousness should have been done by an persondid independent of the CPS
In her report on the failings of the CPS in 2013 she noted, four years after the charging decision had been made all CPS records of the case had been deleted from the system and were impossible to retrieve: WHAT!
She stated ‘ I did not suggest that Mr Starmer was personally involved in the decisions made.’
See Steerpike in the Spectator for a fuller report (1.2.22)

Peter LR
Peter LR
2 years ago

Paul Gambaccini is very critical of Starmer because his directives as Head of CPS meant Paul was falsely accused for a year. He relates it here from 24 minutes in:
https://youtu.be/MP3yCu8VX8k

Chris Mochan
Chris Mochan
2 years ago

While I will shed no tears for Mr Johnson, this particular confected outrage simply exposes how phoney this whole campaign really is. I already thought we were in bizarro world when the whole media and political class were getting in a state about the cake incident, but this is verging on collective insanity. And you can set your watch to this; the moment Johnson goes the narrative will swiftly move on to reversing Brexit.

Julian Pellatt
Julian Pellatt
2 years ago
Reply to  Chris Mochan

‘Progressives’ (the woking-class) in the UK have never forgiven Johnson for being the front man of the Brexit referendum ‘Leave’ campaign in 2016 – and for subsequently delivering the deal after Theresa May’s pathetic premiership failed so abysmally. From the moment he became leader of the Tory party and prime minister by default, and then in his general election campaign of 2019, the woking-class media, led by the BBC, have been determined to oust and destroy him. Just consider the excessive amount of radio and TV time the BBC devoted to just one 2019 story, broken by The Guardian, about Johnson’s fight with his then fiancée – a neighbour in his apartment complex (who turned out to be a Labour activist) filed a formal complaint with the police then gave The Guardian an exclusive.
I am no fan of Boris, who has failed to deliver in key areas of policy and who appears unable to stand up to the awful woke strangulation of free speech and and madness that is destroying western culture and civilisation. But the focused deployment of the BBC and the police relentlessly seeking to oust a sitting prime minister, elected by due democratic process, is a horrifying process; a sure sign that the era of democracy is over. We are at the dawn of a new era, in which liberty will be replaced by unknown impositions – because politicians like Boris failed to stand up to the onslaught.

Last edited 2 years ago by Julian Pellatt
Scott S
Scott S
2 years ago

Seems like Johnson was wrong about this, but he is a desperate man, relying on desperate means. However, I find Starmers use of the word ‘Fascists’ interesting here. No doubt Qanon does have far right followers (and far left), but aren’t they more like internet nerds, searching for conspiracy theories? Starmer sounds like a far left Twitter troll stating this…Revealing his true colours?? Maybe? Maybe not? Its well documented that he isn’t the centrist he claims to be, that I do know.

Last edited 2 years ago by Scott S
Jon Redman
Jon Redman
2 years ago

Rockerfeller
That’d be Rockefeller
much modern conspiracy narratives. 
That’d be many modern conspiracy narratives. 
The Clintons and their connections to the supposed Pizzagate are the alphas of this wave; QAnon threw many more names on that stack; Epstein’s real-life pederasty has allowed the tentacles
Did Epstein go for young boys? Do waves or stacks have tentacles?
Must do better…

Last edited 2 years ago by Jon Redman
Gavin Stewart-Mills
Gavin Stewart-Mills
2 years ago
Reply to  Jon Redman

You missed interchangeable Saville / Savile. An unusually sloppy and somewhat lurid piece for Unherd.

Peter Steven
Peter Steven
2 years ago

I wonder if autocorrect will convert Savile row to Savile Row.

Last edited 2 years ago by Peter Steven
Jonathan Ellman
Jonathan Ellman
2 years ago

Is it possible for a politician with enough integrity to put principle before career to succeed?

George Glashan
George Glashan
2 years ago

I’ll just leave this here for anyone who thinks its too preposterous for a western government to possibly be involved in a conspiracy to cover up a paedophile ring ….
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/07/26/the-german-experiment-that-placed-foster-children-with-pedophiles

George Glashan
George Glashan
2 years ago
Reply to  George Glashan

And this classic, in the genre of “fact checking”…
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/blm-terrorist-rosenberg/

Doug Pingel
Doug Pingel
2 years ago
Reply to  George Glashan

That info fluttered by this parish just a while ago. It wasn’t coverup – it was German government policy. Kind of different to what happened in the UK. There might have been cover-ups or bouts of ‘looking-the-other-way’ for certain indiduals but even Saville’s activities were known by nurses, etc in the NHS. NHS managers were informed but I believe that mouths were kept shut by threats of job-loss. Saville was, to some, a Golden Goose.

Ted Ditchburn
Ted Ditchburn
2 years ago

Starmer’s inherent weakness for fads led him to the grotesque conclusion that *innocent till proven guilty* was out of date and, along with the Police chief Winsor, he pushed *believe the victim*. The soundbite of various activist groups of the day.
While one must respect the victim and respect their claims (alleged until proven), to investigate them properly; ‘believe the victim’ is obvious craziness.
As if by magic, as the article says, the grotesque Carl Beech arrived to expose that idea for the dangerous and seditious nonsense it always was.
Far from properly even apologising for his part in creating Beech and others, he never even mentions his part in it. And apparently this omerta extends to our broadcast media, much of the print media and commentariat.

Julia H
Julia H
2 years ago
Reply to  Ted Ditchburn

‘Believe the victim’ should of course read ‘believe the complainant’ (although even that suggests a bias in favour of their account). There is no ‘victim’ until the facts have been established, or on a balance of probabilities their account is held to be true. Declaring someone a victim at the start of an investigation flies in the face of a fair process.

Michael Friedman
Michael Friedman
2 years ago

Interesting article.