Is there a Tory ‘attack unit’?

Emily Thornberry has said a Tory “attack unit” is behind the so-called beergate furore that has forced Keir Starmer to say he will resign if he is found by police to have broken lockdown rules.

The Labour shadow attorney general made the comments when discussing the allegations with LBC’s Andrew Marr, and suggested that Durham police had been goaded into investigating the incident further by a Tory campaign force.

“The Conservative party has something called an attack unit which has been working overtime, according to The Sunday Times, with various people in Durham putting together something they have given to Durham police,” she told Marr.

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When asked by Marr if she thought the police had been “intimidated by the press”, she answered: “I think that the Conservative party central office believes that it is in their political interest to try to smear Keir Starmer and to try to make sure that all politicians are seen as the same.”

Thornberry’s comments referenced an article in The Sunday Times by chief political commentator Tim Shipman, which assessed Boris Johnson’s chances in the next general election, despite being “roasted” in last week’s local elections.

Shipman wrote that the announcement by Durham police on Friday that they would further investigate a beer and curry enjoyed by Starmer and his staff during a campaign last year was a “success for the CCHQ attack unit” and named its leading figures as Ross Kempsell, the political director of Conservative campaign headquarters (CCHQ), and Alex Wild, head of communications for CCHQ.

Alongside local Tory MP Richard Holden, they “dug up details about the event to undermine claims that it was simply a pause for food in the working day”, reported Shipman. He added that Conservative sources also said they had been “helped on the ground by hard-left Labour activists who resent Starmer replacing Jeremy Corbyn”.

Wild has been described in the past as a “punchy, attack-minded operator” whose style is to “defend the PM from the front foot”, according to Politico’s London Playbook, while Kempsell, once a Times Radio correspondent, is known to be a trusted advisor to the prime minister who has won praise for his work across CCHQ.