There are political misjudgments. There are communications blunders. And then there is what now confronts Downing Street: a correction to Parliament over the Prime Minister’s own legal history — issued only after documentation surfaced contradicting earlier assurances.

The heart of this controversy is not obscure legal nuance. It is about trust.

In January, it was revealed that Sir Keir Starmer, during his time as a barrister, worked without charge on a case that pressed the courts to reopen scrutiny of a British soldier who had already been cleared twice of murder allegations linked to a 2003 incident in Iraq. That soldier would go on to spend more than a decade fighting to clear his name again. Eventually, he was vindicated. But the damage — reputational, emotional, financial — had already been done.

That case did not exist in isolation. It contributed to a legal precedent that widened the application of human rights law to British military operations overseas. In practical terms, it opened the door to waves of litigation and prolonged investigations into troops who had served in combat. Many of those cases collapsed. Some were based on allegations later proven false. Yet soldiers and their families endured years under suspicion.

For veterans, this is not abstract jurisprudence. It is lived trauma.

The political firestorm intensified when it emerged that Sir Keir had professional overlap in Iraq-related litigation with solicitor Phil Shiner — a lawyer who was later struck off and handed a suspended prison sentence after findings that he pursued false allegations against British troops in other cases. No one has produced evidence that Starmer was involved in Shiner’s later misconduct. But the association matters. It matters politically. It matters symbolically. And it matters because of what happened next.

When the story broke, Downing Street reportedly gave media outlets the clear impression that the Prime Minister had not worked alongside Shiner in the way alleged. That position did not survive scrutiny. Court materials and published legal contributions placed both men within the same Iraq-related legal efforts.

A minister subsequently returned to the House of Commons to correct the record and apologise.

That correction is the crux of the scandal.

If the initial assurances were accurate, there would have been no need for amendment. If they were incomplete, the question becomes: why were they incomplete? And who authorised the framing? The only person with precise knowledge of his professional history is the Prime Minister himself.

This is not about whether lawyers should represent unpopular clients. That is the cab-rank rule. It is not about whether courts should uphold the rule of law. Of course they should. It is about choice. Working pro bono on a case that helped expand legal exposure for soldiers was not an obligation. It was a decision.

And when that decision came under scrutiny, the government’s first instinct appears not to have been full disclosure, but damage limitation.

The broader political context cannot be ignored. The story broke at a moment of acute vulnerability for the Prime Minister, amid mounting controversies and declining public confidence. A revelation that he had helped shape legal conditions under which British veterans faced repeated investigations could have been politically devastating. That makes the communications strategy surrounding the episode all the more significant.

Governments survive crises. What they rarely survive is erosion of credibility.

Veterans who served in Iraq did not ask for legal experiments that would subject them to cycles of accusation and reinvestigation. Many believe they were caught in a system that presumed suspicion first and vindication years later. If the Prime Minister played a role — however legally defensible — the public has a right to hear that account in full, without euphemism or selective phrasing.

Parliament was corrected. That is procedurally proper. But correction after exposure is not transparency. It is containment.

The issue now is larger than one case or one lawyer. It is whether Downing Street can be trusted to tell the full truth the first time — especially when that truth is politically inconvenient.

Until that question is answered clearly and directly, the cloud over this episode will not dissipate.