Starmer’s unfitness as leader didn’t just emerge when he conned his way into Labour top job, at least according to survey of staff during his tenure as DPP
Keir Starmer and his acolytes like to make much about the fact that he was the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) before becoming an MP and therefore ran the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).
But according to a survey of staff about halfway through his five-year tenure, he ran it badly – and almost into the ground.
According to an Evening Standard article in 2011, the survey found that 88% of staff thought Starmer and his subordinates ran the service badly – and four out of five thought Starmer’s and his team’s values were not consistent with those of a proper CPS.
Instead of taking the criticism on the chin and changing how he ran the CPS, Starmer blamed the staff and forced them to undergo ‘retraining’:
The Crown Prosecution Service in London is badly managed and failing, according to a damning survey of its own staff leaked to the Standard.
Only one in 14 believes that planned reforms will improve prosecution rates, while just one in 12 feels that “change is managed well” in the organisation. When senior CPS officials were told the results, it is understood that instead of speaking to staff they ordered “retraining” for them.
The embarrassing verdict by the CPS’s own people, contained in a 12-page document passed to the Standard, threatens to heap more pressure on the Government which has ordered the closure of 100 courts and a 25 per cent reduction in the CPS budget. The cuts have led to mounting fears over the public’s reduced access to justice.
Prosecutors dropped tens of thousands of criminal cases in 2007, despite having enough evidence to bring offenders to court. The CPS halted action against more than 25,000 defendants because it was not in the “public interest” to continue. More than 2,000 cases destined for crown court were also thrown out because it failed to get files ready in time.
The sharpest criticism is reserved for CPS bosses. Just 21 per cent of staff believe the actions of Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, and his senior staff “are consistent with the CPS’s values”. Only 12 per cent believe “the organisation as a whole is managed well”.
A source in the CPS said staff were amazed by the retraining order, saying: “It was a strange reaction. It seemed like the higher-ups were trying to brainwash us into going along with all the damaging reforms.”
Today, Starmer boasted about prosecuting ‘grooming gangs’ during his time as DPP. However, he failed to prosecute either serial rapist Jimmy Savile – or the police killers of the innocent Jean-Charles de Menezes or Ian Tomlinson. Starmer as DPP was reportedly furious when Theresa May killed his plan to extradite autistic hacker Gary McKinnon to the US – and his CPS destroyed evidence in the Julian Assange case.
According to an overwhelming majority of CPS staff, Starmer’s unfitness to lead did not begin when he conned his way into Labour’s top job – and his petty, vindictive response to their criticism is entirely in keeping with his track record as the ‘leader’ of a political party.
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