If Keir Starmer wins the Labour leadership, popular “disk jockey” and severely-wronged public figure and beat obituarist Paul Gambaccini says he will stand (or run) against him at the next election.
From The Times:
Paul Gambaccini, the BBC radio star, is threatening to stand against Sir Keir Starmer at the next general election in protest at the Labour leadership hopeful’s handling of Operation Yewtree.
The disc jockey, who was arrested in 2013 on false allegations of sexual abuse, blames Starmer, the former director of public prosecutions, for the “torment” he suffered at the hands of the Metropolitan police.
“I can assure you if the Labour Party makes Keir Starmer their leader, I will run against him at the next election,” he said.
Mr Gambaccini claims that Sir Keir, who headed the Crown Prosecution Service from 2008 to 2013, launched a “witch-hunt” against him and the likes of Sir Cliff Richard and Jimmy Tarbuck, “ruining countless lives”.
In 2013, Sir Keir responded to the Jimmy Savile scandal and sex-grooming cases by issuing new guidance to prosecutors to focus on the credibility of allegations, not the alleged victims, when deciding whether to prosecute.
In a valedictory interview on the Andrew Marr Show that year, he said that in the past there were “crude tests” for believability and “many victims didn’t have the confidence to come forward because we were asking the wrong questions”.
Mr Gambaccini, 70, said: “I believe that Starmer has always wanted to be prime minister and I believe that he was playing to the crowd with his ‘believe every accuser’ mantra.”
The host of Radio 2’s Pick of the Pops was arrested in October 2013 over false allegations of child sex abuse, his home was raided and he spent 12 months on bail before being exonerated. He has since successfully sued the CPS, winning an undisclosed sum.
Mr Gambacinni is still deeply traumatised by the experience, which he believes began with Starmer.
He said: “I have the most negative feelings about Keir Starmer imaginable. Countless human beings were tormented because of him and he has never apologised. Keir is not only unsuitable to be leader of the Labour Party, he is unsuitable for any public position down to and including dog-catcher. He serves only himself and not the people.”
The extraordinary attack on the leadership hopeful is particularly wounding because Mr Gambacinni has been a prominent supporter of Labour. He has supported the party since the late 1980s and, until his arrest in 2013, hosted fundraisers for Ed Miliband at his London home.
Mr Gambacinni says other of the party’s celebrity supporters have spoken out against Sir Keir. He claims the actor Stephen Fry told an audience at a Labour fundraiser in 2014 “to remember a basic tenet of British justice: innocent until proven guilty — and pointed out that Operation Yewtree was losing more cases than it was winning”.
In 2015, Mr Tarbuck, 79, broke down in tears on a television talk show discussing his arrest in 2013 over false allegations of child sex abuse in the 1970. His accusers said they were molested on Top of the Pops in 1963. Tarbuck pointed out that he had never appeared on the show, which didn’t even begin till 1964. It took the CPS almost a year to clear him.
Sir Cliff, 79, was also traumatised after false allegations were levelled at him. He has since left the UK and now lives in New York.
Mr Gambacinni said: “We now know that the overwhelming number of cases against public personalities was false, usually outrageously so. Starmer baled [out] just in time because the cases he had signed off on were going down in flames.”
The presenter still regularly meets with others who were falsely accused after Sir Keir encouraged victims to come forward. The group has tried to piece together how their “ordeal” began and have concluded that it started with Sir Keir, who was knighted in 2014 for services to law and criminal justice.
The radio star said: “[Starmer’s] ‘believe every accuser’ philosophy is an inversion of the fundamental tenet of British justice: innocent until proven guilty. Everyone has a right to be heard. No one has a right to be automatically believed.”
He added: “The experience of being on bail ended years ago, but the torment of not getting an apology from the police or Starmer, and seeing my tormentors being promoted, continues. The idea that this person could be promoted when he caused so much suffering to so many innocent people boggles the brain.”
Sir Keir’s team pointed to an article he wrote in 2013 in which he talked of the “very damaging impact” a false allegation of rape or sexual assault, either malicious or misguided, could have on those falsely accused.
He spoke at length about this on a Word podcast a while ago. Prime Ministers Question Time would certainly be good. “Mr speaker would the PM care to tell the house the highest chart position reached by REO Speedwagon in the US?”
I think those who have been accused should have a right to name suppression until found guilty. Why isn’t it done like that?
The thinking was that knowing someone has been accused will encourage other victims who may have been too frightened to report abuse.
It doesn’t seem to have persuaded very many genuine victims to come forward, but it does seem to have resulted in cranks and attention-seekers making spurious accusations, so obviously it’s not a good idea.
Ways of encouraging victims of assault to come forward are obviously needed but this one has been counterproductive. I expect genuine victims have been put off by the way it has been bungled, as well as innocent people’s reputations being dragged through the mud.
Perhaps alleged abusers should only be named when there is already deemed to be enough evidence for a prosecution, and only to reputable support organisations who should be subject to severe restrictions on who has access to the information.
Just the mention of a TOTP in 63 is alarming.
Surely, at the very least, easily checked facts should be easily checked.
Didn’t the accuser of Cliff Richard mention a concert in Sheffield in a year when Cliff didn’t play a concert in Sheffield?
And Rolf Harris was convicted of assaulting a girl at a concert in a community centre in Portsmouth which never actually occurred. Go figure.
Doesn’t mean no assault took place. As most of the allegations were from the distant past, dates, venues and types of event might have been misremembered.
It does make it difficult to say it definitely happened – beyond a reasonable doubt.
Possibly, but if we consider 2 things, the alleged assault and the alleged time/location, then the former being correct is more important than the latter, if one of them is wrong.
Actually, the accusation was made about the day Cliff appeared at a Billy Graham rally at Bramall Lane, Sheffield In 1985 and Cliff was there, as he walked pas me when he had just done his sound check. I was 15, but can confirm that Cliff didn’t make any attempt to fiddle with me. I can also confirm that I was there working (first aid) and hadn’t gone to be ‘healed’. As a non-believer in the power or Christ, or the power of Cliff, I found the evening bizarre. Big Daddy (the wrestler, not the comedy band) was also there, praising the Lord.
I was going to say it was the busiest we had ever been at a football ground, as the average age of the crowd was 78 and there were a lot of unwell people there to start with, but then I remembered about what happened at the other ground a few years later.
But if Cliff did find time to fiddle with someone at the show he would have done well, because there were 3 or 4 burly minders with him who wouldn’t let anyone near him. It was quite thrilling at the time though, being a few feet away from Cliff, as by that age I hadn’t really seen anyone famous, who wasn’t a footballer. Not that famous anyway.
The use of the word “fiddle” is maybe not the right one. My brother met Jimmy Savile at about the same age, nothing happened but he said he was very creepy.
But didn’t Cliff have an album around then called ‘I’m Nearly Famous’ or something like that? Was he trying to con us?
Don’t forget he was wired for sound, so how the heck could he have got away with any dodgy behaviour?
Brilliant! 😀
Billy Graham’s height was 1.87m, which should have been no surprise – Cliff liked tall speakers.
*applause*
Clearly, a way has to be found that navigates the pathway through these sorts of allegations that balances all the sensitivities and pitfalls of going too far in either direction.
It’s true that some people, like Gambaccini have been exonerated after investigation but others have been found guilty so we also need to be careful not to tip the scales back too far the other way – which is part of the reason that Savile et al were able to get away with their actions for so long.
I can’t begin to think how it must feel to be in Gambaccini’s shoes but there doesn’t seem to be much actual evidence for these allegations against Starmer.
He’s been tore down a la Gambo…
Chapeau!
I’d recommend Gambo’s excellent book about his arrest and its aftermath, called ‘Love,Paul’ if I recall correctly.
I feel I need to word this carefully because I will come across as a heartless pig – but politically I don’t think this will harm Keir Starmer at all.
I can think of few things worse than that which Paul Gambaccini went through, but if his mood is anything like it was in an interview he gave to The Observer (I think) about a year ago, I agree with you.