Is history repeating itself in the row over Sir Keir Starmer’s voice coach Leonie Mellinger?
After all, she is not the first person who has coached a prime minister to be caught in political controversy.
After the Tories demanded a police probe, are there echoes of the row over Tony and Cherie Blair’s “lifestyle coach” Carole Caplin?
At Prime Minister’s Questions, Sir Keir defended meeting Ms Mellinger during lockdown in 2020, claiming “I was working” while the Tories were “partying”.
The Conservatives then stepped up their attacks, announcing that leader Kemi Badenoch wants a police investigation into whether laws were broken.
That is not going to happen, however. The Metropolitan Police said that because the alleged offence was more than three years ago, no action will be taken.
But have we been here before with a political row about a Labour prime minister receiving specialist coaching?
In the 1990s, before and after he became PM, Ms Caplin coached Sir Tony and wife Cherie, advising him on fitness and his wife on style.
And so, as the Tories continue attempting to embarrass Sir Keir over “Voice Coach Gate”, are there similarities between his voice coach and Ms Caplin?
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It has been suggested, for instance, that both have a racy past. Now 65, Ms Mellinger, an actress, was once married to the star of the “Confessions…” movies, Robin Asquith.
In her acting career, she appeared in Channel 4’s political comedy The New Statesman as the leather-clad wife of a Conservative MP.
She also appeared in the 1981 film of the bleak Doris Lessing novel Memoirs Of A Survivor, which also starred Nigel Hawthorne, later star of TV’s Yes Minister.
Carole Caplin, a former dancer who once dated Gary Numan and Adam Ant, hit the headlines in 1994 when The Sun published topless photos of her under the headline “Secrets of Blairs’ Girl Friday”.
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To make matters worse, it happened at the very moment the then Labour leader, elected earlier in 1994, was celebrating a successful party conference speech.
But much worse was to follow. In 2002 it emerged that Ms Caplin’s boyfriend, Australian Peter Foster, was a conman with a conviction for conspiring to supply a weight-loss drink that turned out to be tea.
The problem was that Foster had helped Cherie Blair buy two flats in Bristol when their eldest son Euan was at university there. The result was one of the biggest controversies of Sir Tony’s premiership.
More than 20 years later, it is now Sir Keir’s turn to face questions about his own coaching.
In the Commons, Tory MP Gagan Mohindra challenged the PM: “Can he repeat his assurances that all rules were followed while the country was in tier 4 lockdown in December 2020, not just by him but his team as well, but also his voice coach Leonie Mellinger?”
Though he did not repeat the claim he made in Brussels on Monday that no rules were broken, a furious Sir Keir hit back: “In December 2020, I was in my office working on the expected Brexit deal.
“With my team we had to analyse the deal as it came in at speed, prepare and deliver a live statement at speed on one of the most important issues for our country in recent years. That’s what I was doing.
“What were they doing? Suitcases of food into Downing Street, partying and fighting, vomiting up the walls, leaving the cleaner to remove red wine stains. That’s the difference: I was working, they were partying.”
But a spokesman for the Tory leader responded: “The key question here is: is a voice coach a key worker who can travel from Tier 4 to Tier 3 during lockdown?
“It doesn’t matter if you’re part of a core team, that is the question. Now, Keir Starmer said that lawmakers can’t be lawbreakers. It is almost unimaginable to disagree that that was a clear breach of the COVID rules.”
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And asked if Mrs Badenoch thought police should investigate, he said: “Yes, she does.”
Some years after the Carole Caplin controversy, Sir Tony wrote in his memoirs that she was “a good friend and reliable confidant” for his wife, but he should have acknowledged at the beginning that she was working for them.
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And as for Sir Keir, the threat of a police investigation into allegations of breaking lockdown rules did not last long.
“We can confirm we have received a report,” said a Met Police spokesperson. “The specific legislation that would be used by police forces dealing with offences during COVID has a three-year deadline for initiating proceedings.
“As this alleged incident falls outside of this timeframe, no action will be taken.”
