Labour's Keir Starmer squirms over whether he 'lied' when he said Jeremy Corbyn would make a 'great' PM before the 2019 general election

Sir Keir Starmer squirmed tonight as he faced a fresh grilling over his past claim that Jeremy Corbyn would make a 'great' prime minister.

The Labour leader was quizzed over whether he 'lied' when he previously expressed public support for his hard-left predecessor before the 2019 general election.

'I don't think the choice at the last election was a good choice,' Sir Keir told The Sun's Never Mind The Ballots show.

He insisted he 'didn't think we would win' when challenged about his endorsement of Mr Corbyn during Labour's last election campaign.

Sir Keir also defended serving under Mr Corbyn as a senior shadow minister between 2016 and 2020.

Sir Keir said: 'Leaders are temporary but political parties are permanent.

'It was important to have a voice in the shadow cabinet. It meant I could challenge anti-Semitism.

'And it meant the Labour Party never veered from its position on things that are fundamentally important like NATO. I accept other colleagues did different things.

'But I knew, everybody knew, there was always going to be a day after when we would have the opportunity for a new leader of our party.

'And to make sure our party was there to face the future.'

Sir Keir said Labour was now 'fundamentally different' under him than it was during Mr Corbyn's leadership.

'What I'm asking for now is the opportunity to pick the country up, which is as broken as my party was in 2019, and change it for the better,' he added. 

Last week, Sir Keir ducked a volley of questions over whether he truly believed Mr Corbyn would have made a 'great' prime minister - as he previously claimed - when appearing on BBC Question Time.

Since replacing Mr Corbyn as Labour leader in 2020, Sir Keir has attempted to distance himself from his hard-left predecessor.

Mr Corbyn's time in charge of Labour was marked by a series of anti-Semitism rows, while a former head of MI6 branded him a 'danger' to national security.

When he was first elected Labour leader in 2015, Mr Corbyn said he would never use Britain's nuclear weapons if he became PM. He also later voted against the renewal of the UK's Trident programme.

In 2018, following the poisonings of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury, Mr Corbyn was accused of 'siding with Russia' after criticising the Government for 'rushing' to blame Vladimir Putin's regime.

In 2022, while he was suspended as a Labour MP under Sir Keir's leadership, Mr Corbyn expressed a wish that military alliances like NATO could be ultimately disbanded.

He said he did not blame NATO for Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but added it had to be looked at in a historical context.

During his appearance on Question Time last night, Sir Keir was laughed at by the audience as he dodged replying 'yes or no' when asked whether he meant it when he said Mr Corbyn would have been a 'great' premier.

The Labour leader instead suggested his predecessor would have been 'better' than Boris Johnson. 

'It wasn't a question that really arose because I didn't think we were going to win the election,' Sir Keir said.