Lib Dem chief whip Wendy Chamberlain mocks Sir Keir Starmer’s ‘quite grey’ hair

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

The chief whip of the Liberal Democrats has taken a pop at Sir Keir Starmer, saying he has “gone quite grey” since taking over as prime minister.

Days after a TV interview which saw an apparent change in the PM’s hair colour go viral online, Wendy Chamberlain piled in on the jokes about the stresses of high office.

At the party’s annual conference in Brighton, Ms Chamberlain was asked to rate the Labour leader’s job as PM so far out of 10.

She told journalists: “I’m not sure I want to give him a score out of 10... All I would say is he’s gone quite grey, hasn’t he?

“I said that last night - I said I’ve got 72 MPs to whip and I did get the hair dye out last weekend."

It came after Sir Keir denied during a visit to Washington DC that his hair was greying due to the stresses of the job.

Asked if he had read the stories about his hair getting "considerably greyer", Sir Keir laughed and said: "No. I don’t think it has, anyway."

During a BBC interview to talk about Lord Darzi’s damning report into the NHS, social media users pointed out Sir Keir’s hair colour appeared to have changed colour in the 10 weeks since he became prime minister.

As well as being asked about Sir Keir’s performance overall, Ms Chamberlain was asked about his decision to means test winter fuel payment, effectively stripping it from millions of pensioners.

She said she was just “disappointed, full stop”. She added: “I don’t necessarily feel this is the change that people were voting for.

“In 2010 people had had good times for a good period, and so accepted that potentially there were things that could be cut or changed.”

But she said Labour’s inheritance was that “everything is on its knees”, and urged the party to come up with solutions rather than blaming things on the Conservatives.

The Labour Party was contacted for comment.