This week, lobby hacks all magically noticed something which had been in the public domain for ages: Keir Starmer loves a flippin’ freebie. Whether it’s tickets to see Coldplay (the jokes write themselves), or the complimentary use of a corporate box at the other North London team, the prime minister has accepted more gifts than every Labour leader since 1997 combined.
Don’t worry, he has an excuse. In an interview with ITV News yesterday, Sir Keir cited security concerns as a reason why he can’t be in the stands anymore (most of the public would think this “fair do’s”, he claims). That doesn’t really explain why he needs a multi-millionaire Labour peer to buy his glasses though.
If you can cast your mind back through the mists of time to earlier this week, you may remember that this row was kicked off by the revelation that Lord Alli – chair of the fashion retailer ASOS, amongst other things – had bought Starmer’s wife about £5,000 worth of high-end clothing. Scurrying to defend their boss’ wife’s right to wavy garms, Labour MPs subsequently took to the airwaves, claiming that Lady Starmer looking nice was nothing short of a public service. They had less to say about why the prime minister (who earns more than £160,000 a year) couldn’t fork out for his wife’s clothes himself.
In case you were worried that it was only the Starmers who got to feel the benefit of Lord Alli’s largesse, rest assured that Angela Rayner got in on the act too. The deputy prime minister rang in the New Year at Lord Alli’s Manhattan penthouse, which she had been given the free use of for five nights last year.
The story from Labour is that Lord Alli was acting from the goodness of his own heart, and the Downing Street pass he was entrusted with since the election was so that he could help with the transition phase of a new government. Sure, Jan. A great humanitarian instinct must similarly be what motivates gambling giants to gift Starmer a VIP day at the races, or a construction firm linked to the Grenfell disaster to hand out free football tickets. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, as they say. But my, Starmer’s eating a lot of them.
Though Labour MPs are keen to stress that such gifts and donations are within the rules and above board, the public don’t see it the same way. Fewer than 10% of people polled by More In Common think that MPs should accept donations to pay for tickets to sporting and cultural events, and an even tinier percentage think it’s ok for donations to pay for clothes to official functions. A mere 3% are fine with the idea that MPs should get their holidays covered. Like Boris Johnson before him, Starmer has vastly overestimated the public’s latitude for well-paid politicians living high on the hog without having to dip into their own pockets.
It would be the easiest thing in the world for the prime minister to return his gifted clothes, and say that he’ll no longer accept freebies for his own leisure activities. After all, most people in the UK have to pay for their own gig tickets and the like. Why shouldn’t Starmer? But, for some strange reason, he just can’t bring himself to give up the goods. Perhaps he really is just as venal as some of the Tory prime ministers which preceded him.
Ash Sarkar is a contributing editor at Novara Media.
