Labour’s Emily Thornberry has insisted Keir Starmer won’t be fined over his alleged Covid breach in Durham.

During an interview with GB News this morning, the Shadow Attorney General repeatedly played down concerns Mr Starmer may have to quit over the scandal.

She told Eamonn Holmes and Isabel Webster: “Keir spoke about this yesterday and what a contrast with Boris Johnson. Kier said that if the police fine me, I will resign. That’s what he said. We have not heard from Durham police and that’s the end of it really. All I can tell you is that Keir has said if he gets a fine from Durham police he will resign but he’s not going to get a fine from them because he hasn’t done anything wrong.

“Unlike Number 10 – that was like party central during the pandemic. Kier Starmer did nothing wrong, and he will not get fined.”

Ms Thornberry also spoke out about Starmer’s announcement on Brexit.

Asked by Eamonn Holmes if Keir Starmer is a fraud for saying he is going to make Brexit work, Ms Thornberry, who campaigned to remain, said: “No, he’s absolutely genuine.

“What we have to do is we have to accept the reality. It’s a one way street, we have gone and the fact of the matter is that we will not be able to rejoin the European Union on the same terms as we were members before – it is simply impossible.

“So what we should be doing is making the best of the situation, and we should be moving on and looking forward and being optimistic but being prepared to face the problems that we have as a nation, face the problems that we have with our nearest neighbours, and make sure that we sorted out not just be afraid as the Government, they spend their time running away from it.”

Ms Thornberry also used the interview to hit out at fuel protesters saying they should not block “the arteries” of the country.

She said demonstrators should ensure that essential services are not blocked and criticised the Government for not dealing with the issue of fuel costs.

Asked what Labour would do during an interview on Breakfast with Eamonn Holmes and Isabel Webster on GB News, she said: “The first thing is that we should recognise that people do have the right to protest but they don’t have the right to close down and close down roads ad nauseam.

“We need to get the balance right on that, but I think that’s right that people should have the opportunity to be able to express their views.

“I say we also need to bear in mind that on those roads, there will be ambulances, there will be lorries, taking food to shops and so forth.

“We need to make sure the arteries of our country remain in a healthy place.”

She said the Government should cut tax on fuel and accused firms supplying fuel to consumers of keeping prices criminally high.

Ms Thornberry said: “What we should also be doing as a Government, if we were in government, we’ll be actually looking at what do we do about the fact that these prices are so high.

“We heard recently from the chancellor, he was going to cut VAT, but he never had as far as we can see an agreement with these petrol companies saying that they would actually pass on that cut to the consumers.

There was no agreement in advance so the petrol companies are going ‘oh, thank you very much, I’ll pocket that, keep the prices the same as they are before.

“We need to make sure that we don’t have this kind of racketeering from the petrol companies, but we also need to have some sort of vision when it comes to making sure that we’re not dependent on fossil fuels in which we need to rely on all sorts of regimes around the world.”

Ms Thornberry went on to say that the country needs to become self-reliant but progress is being hampered by an “exhausted” Government.

“We need to be self-reliant and in order to be self-reliant, we need to look at the new forms of power that are available to us as a country.

“We need to make sure that we’re subsidising people on low and middle incomes to be able to move on to electric vehicles.

“We need to make sure that we have PowerPoints up and down the country so people can charge their electric vehicles, we need to have a bit of vision.”

She added: “But what do we get from this Government? We get nothing but scandal after scandal, lie after lie.

“They don’t have time or the bandwidth to be able to deal with any of these issues.

“They’re exhausted. They have no ideas, and frankly, they’re letting the country down and we’re stuck as a nation.”