Keir Starmer's Sentencing Contradiction: Architect or Outraged Bystander?

You Can't Write the Rules and Then Blame the Referee.

Stephen Morris, General Secretary of the Workers of England Union, said:

"The Workers of England Union is an independent Trade Union and we have no political affiliation to Labour, the Conservatives, Reform UK, the Liberal Democrats, or any other political party. Our duty is to represent working people across England and to speak out whenever we believe those in positions of power are failing to be honest with the public. This article is not about party politics. It is about accountability. When politicians seek to distance themselves from systems, policies, or decisions that they previously helped to shape, the public has every right to ask difficult questions. The criminal justice system relies on public confidence.

People need to believe that justice is fair, that victims are protected, that offenders are held properly accountable, and that the law applies equally to everyone. Jury service remains one of the most important ways in which ordinary citizens participate directly in that process and see justice being done in England. The Workers of England Union believes that trust in the justice system is strengthened by honesty and transparency, not political convenience. The public can decide for themselves whether Keir Starmer's current position is consistent with the role he played at the heart of the criminal justice system.

What cannot be disputed is that he was one of the most senior figures within that system for many years. Our concern is about ensuring that workers and their families receive the full facts and can make an informed judgement. Working people deserve nothing less."

Stephen Morris
General Secretary of the Workers of England Union

When Keir Starmer claims to be shocked or outraged by lenient sentencing decisions, such as the case of the young males who raped and filmed two girls, he is asking the public to forget a crucial part of his own record.

Starmer was not merely a passive observer of the criminal justice system. Between 2008 and 2013 he served as Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), heading the Crown Prosecution Service, and during that same period he sat on the Sentencing Council with all of the other Labour appointees. That organisation was responsible for developing and issuing the sentencing guidelines used by courts across England and Wales.

He was appointed DPP under the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. The Sentencing council was created for him and he spent five years at the very centre of the criminal justice policy making establishment.

This matters because judges do not simply’ invent Sentence’s according to THEIR OWN personal opinion. They operate within a framework established by the Sentencing Council guidelines. Courts are required to follow those guidelines unless there is a clear reason to depart from them. In practice, judges are implementing a system designed and approved by the state and the governments.

Therefore, when Starmer publicly criticises sentences as too lenient or suggests that outcomes are somehow unexpected, it raises an obvious question,

Did he help create the framework within which those decisions were made?

No serious observer can argue that the former DPP was unaware of how sentencing guidelines operated. As a member of both the Sentencing Guidelines Council and the Sentencing Council, Starmer had direct personal involvement in the system that produced guidance for judges. He understood precisely how sentencing ranges were constructed, how aggravating and mitigating factors were assessed, and how courts were expected to approach offenders in different circumstances.

This is why claims of surprise ring hollow.

It is credible to suggest that somebody who spent years helping to create prosecution policy and playing a leading part in the bodies responsible for the ‘Sentencing Guidelines’ was somehow detached from the practical consequences of those policies? Of course, Starmer did not ‘personally’ sentence offenders as Judges do that. But that is not the point.

The issue is accountability.

Judges are operating within a framework established by legislation and guidance developed by institutions in which Starmer himself played a leading role.

For Starmer to condemn outcomes while denying responsibility for the system that produced them is deliberately misleading. If a politician has spent years helping shape the machinery of criminal justice, they cannot later pretend to be an outraged bystander when that system delivers results that prove unpopular.

The reality is that sentencing policy is not created in a vacuum. It is the product of government decisions, prosecutorial priorities, legal guidance, and institutional direction. Keir Starmer was not outside that process. He was at its very heart. That is why attempts to portray himself as merely a critic of sentencing outcomes deserves close scrutiny. The public has every right to ask whether criticism of the consequences is being used to avoid discussion of who helped design the system in the first place.

In Summary

Keir Starmer clearly wants the public to see him as the tough-talking Prime Minister expressing outrage at sentencing decisions. He clearly wants people to quietly forget, that he was the ‘former Director of Public Prosecutions’ who sat on the very organisation that the Labour Party created to be responsible for developing sentencing guidelines He wants everyone to forget that he was the leading role in the organisation that clearly stated that ‘The courts must follow its sentencing guidelines’. The guidelines that do not send rapists to prison! Let’s be even clearer, guidelines were produced that fail to send ‘rapists who film themselves committing rape’, to prison for fear of criminalising them. The problem is that both versions cannot be true for Starmer at the same time. He is either part of the ‘Sentencing guideline architect team’ or he is ‘just an outraged bystander’

Please consider this before you make up your mind?

If he was the architect of the guidelines, then his outrage surely must be fake? However, if he wants to admit that he had no idea in what he was doing as the former Director of Public Prosecutions, then why on earth do we have such an incompetent man serving as the Prime Minister? Because it would be an astonishing admission from a man who spent five years at the summit of British state’s criminal justice system to claim he did not have a clue that those guidelines would fail to send rapists to prison. The public across England can decide for themselves which explanation is more believable.

Supporting evidence

Starmer was a member of the Sentencing Guidelines Council from 2008–2010 and the Sentencing Council from 2010–2013 while serving as DPP.
Judges in England and Wales are expected to follow sentencing guidelines issued by the Sentencing Council, although they retain discretion in individual cases.