Sir Keir Starmer has been accused of dragging the King into a party-political row over the monarch's flagship speech, the Daily Express can reveal. The outgoing Prime Minister used a briefing document attached to the speech to attack his political rivals.
Civil Servants Removed Partisan Content
Mandarins were forced to strip a swipe at the Tories from the official paperwork after Conservative MPs staged a protest. The politicised line was not in the speech His Majesty delivered to Parliament, but buried in Sir Keir's foreword, which took aim at 'Tory austerity'. That reference has now been formally branded a 'party political' statement and removed, in an embarrassing climbdown for the resigning Prime Minister.
Critics said it was a constitutional outrage that the monarchy's most important parliamentary occasion had been tainted by political point-scoring. Such briefings are longstanding official publications produced by the Civil Service, not the governing party. They are meant to lay out the Government's legislative agenda free of political bias.
Shadow Minister Complained to Cabinet Office
Shadow Cabinet Office minister Mike Wood wrote to the Cabinet Office's top mandarin to complain the dig breached strict impartiality rules. In his letter, Mr Wood said the comment broke the Civil Service Code, the Ministerial Code and official guidance for government communicators. That guidance states that communications must be 'objective and explanatory, not biased or polemical'.
In a reply seen by the Daily Express, permanent secretary Catherine Little confirmed officials had pulled the offending content. She wrote: 'Officials have removed the party political content from the Prime Minister's foreword, and reviewed the rest of the document to ensure there are no further party political references.' Ms Little added that the Cabinet Office would 'review and update' its internal guidance 'to ensure that this does not happen again in future'.
Wood: 'Final Humiliation' for Starmer
Mr Wood seized on the rebuke, branding it 'the final humiliation for Starmer's beleaguered Government'. He said: 'When he came to office, he promised the Civil Service that "you have my confidence, my support and, importantly, my respect". The fact that the Civil Service has now rebuked Starmer for including party-political content in the King's Speech documents shows just how little respect he has for the Civil Service – and, even worse, for the King.'
He said: 'Despite promising a government of ethics and integrity, Starmer's administration has consistently tried to politicise the Civil Service to compensate for his failure of political strategy and political communications.' Mr Wood warned there could 'be no repeat of such behaviour under the former Labour special adviser turned next prime minister' – a pointed swipe at leadership frontrunner Andy Burnham.
The blunder caps a humiliating end to Sir Keir's premiership, with the Prime Minister having resigned amid mounting calls from his own MPs to leave office. A government spokesperson said it was 'standard practice for political content to be removed from government-published documents'.
