Sir Keir Starmer has raised eyebrows by having a special wooden stand put out for his reading notes in the House of Commons.
Before the Prime Minister addressed MPs on Monday, one of Parliament’s doorkeepers unfolded a blue cloth, placed it on the despatch box then put a slanted wooden stand on top of it.
It prompted speculation that it might have been to help the PM read his speech more easily – and that perhaps he needed a stronger spectacles prescription just months after accepting £2,485 for ‘multiple pairs of glasses’ from Labour peer Lord Alli.
After the PM finished his statement on the first anniversary of the October 7 attack, Foreign Secretary David Lammy then helped remove the stand and cloth before he made his own statement from the traditional despatch box.
Sky News’s chief political correspondent Jon Craig wrote online after spotting the stand being brought out: ‘Its purpose, it would appear, was to make it easier for Sir Keir to read his notes during his statement.’
It revived memories of former Labour PM Gordon Brown, who is blind in one eye, putting his notes on stacks of books that he balanced atop the despatch box.
But last night Downing Street insisted that Sir Keir’s eyesight was not the reason why he had the wooden stand put out for him.
It was claimed that he just uses the stand to hold his papers in place as it has a ledge along the bottom.
‘It holds his papers. He’s been using it since the King’s Speech,’ a source told the Mail.