Unseemly haste can be lethal for a leadership contender — just ask Michael Portillo about those phone lines he had installed as John Major and John Redwood slugged it out for the Conservative leadership in 1995.
So it is with keen interest that your Mole notes that “keirforleader.com” — a URL that’ll be prime digital real estate over the next few months — was registered late on election night. Ninety-one minutes after that exit poll dropped, to be precise.
Who’s responsible? Prudently, whoever snapped the domain name up took the step of anonymising their details. Back in the analogue media world, however, Jenny Chapman, Starmer’s old shadow Brexit team sidekick, is already on the airwaves calling for him to run, having lost her seat in Darlington last week.
But when three leadership websites were registered under the name of one Clive Lewis at the height of the Labour coup in the days after the Brexit vote, the sometime star of the Labour left publicly denied he was responsible and blamed the “unhealthy interest” of the party’s right.
Forward planning or mischief-making? Your Mole is reserving judgement.
Update: Sources close to Keir Starmer say the site has “absolutely nothing” to do with the shadow Brexit Secretary.
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