Sir Keir Starmer tests positive for Covid for second time in three months

Daniel Keane5 January 2022

Sir Keir Starmer has tested positive for Covid and Angela Rayner will deputise for him at Prime Minister’s Questions, a party spokesman said.

It is the second time the Labour leader has tested positive for the virus in the past three months, after contracting the virus on the day of the Budget in October.

Sir Keir is not thought to have any symptoms but the infection was picked up as part of his regular testing routine.

This latest positive test will mean it is the sixth period of self-isolation for the Labour leader since the start of the pandemic.

Though reinfection is rare within such a short timeframe, Professor Neil Ferguson noted on Tuesday how up to 15 per cent of Omicron cases are reinfections.

It comes just a day after Sir Keir delivered a speech in Birmingham setting out his “contract with the British people” should his party return to power.

In a message to Red Wall voters who abandoned Labour at the last general election, Sir Keir said the party had “changed” and was “offering solutions for the future”.

Sir Keir also said the Labour Party “is a deeply patriotic party”. Speaking in front of a Union Jack flag, he name-checked the Attlee, Wilson and Blair Governments, pledging to “write the fourth chapter”.

The address was delivered at Birmingham’s Millennium Point to a small group of city Labour MPs including Jess Phillips, Khalid Mahmood, Jack Dromey, Stephen McCabe and Preet Gill, together with members of the media and party advisers.

Also in the audience of about 20 were Birmingham City Council leader Cllr Ian Ward, and the West Midlands regional police and crime commissioner Simon Foster.

Ms Phillips, Ms Gill and Cllr Ward also later joined the Labour leader on a tour of a green energy and decarbonisation research site in the Tyseley area of the city, along with members of the press.

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