Does it matter that Sir Keir Starmer had a late-night curry with party workers after a day campaigning in Durham last year? No, it doesn’t.  The whole beergate row is utterly ridiculous.   

There was no conceivable way that the Labour leader knocking back beer and korma with colleagues could have harmed anyone, even though it may technically have broken the Tier 2 lockdown rules.  Social gatherings indoors were banned at the time. 

But you know what I’m going to say next, don’t you? After six months in which every aspect of after-work parties in Number Ten has been minutely examined by the media, and by Sir Keir personally, it was inevitable that the same scrutiny would be applied to him after a video emerged of him drinking beer late at night with party workers.  The Labour leader’s acolytes claim it is mud-slinging. But if you don’t like mud you should stop throwing it.

I have a particular interest in beergate because I was wrong about partygate. I thought that civil servants, who’d been working together all day, were quite entitled to have a few drinks in their own bubble after work. What possible harm?  They’d been under virtual house arrest doing extremely hard work. Why not let their hair down?

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