Free Gear Keir And The Victoria Sponge

Remember all Labour's howls about "Tory sleaze"? Well, now it's their turn at the trough - and they're not letting the opportunity pass them by.

Free clothes, free tickets… I wonder who paid for his drinks?

A few days ago Sir Keir Starmer and his deputy Angela Rayner announced that, in future, they will no longer accept gifts of clothes from wealthy donors. It’s amazing that our two most senior politicians need to make such a declaration; after all they’re both on six-figure salaries, Starmer is a multimillionaire with his own personal tax loophole and Rayner has made a considerable amount of money through property deals, so one would imagine they’d be perfectly capable of buying their own clothes. Apparently not, though.

Over the last couple of weeks it’s emerged that since he became Labour leader in 2019 Starmer has raked in a staggering haul of gifts and donations from party donors, and particularly from Lord Waheed Alli. Starmer’s dismissive response to this was to claim that “All Members of Parliament get gifts” - but the fact is no other members of parliament get as many gifts as Keir Starmer does. Since December 2019 Starmer has collected £107,145 worth of bungs - more than two and a half times the £40,289 received by runner-up Lucy Powell MP (Labour, Manchester Central). In fact over this period Starmer has benefited from more gifts than the next three members of parliament combined.

Spreading The Joy

Starmer isn’t the only one to benefit from all these freebies. I already mentioned Angela Rayner, who’s had £3,550 worth of “work clothes” from Alli (and has now hired a photographer for £68,000 a year, at taxpayers’ expense, to take photos of her wearing them). Alli also gave Rayner three more handouts over the last year, totalling over £17,000, plus use of an expensive New York penthouse flat so she could take a holiday with Sam Tarry (who was a Labour MP at the time) over New Year. When she declared this freebie Rayner “forgot” to mention that Tarry had joined her. She then claimed gifts have been “a feature of our politics for a very long time”. And yes, this is the same Angela Rayner who, in 2022, ranted “Who paid for Boris Johnson’s luxury Caribbean holiday and the renovation of his flat, and what did these donors expect in return for their huge generosity?” Well, quite. I wonder what Lord Alli expected from Rayner in return for his huge generosity?

Then there’s Rachel Reeves, the chancellor whose one big decision so far has been to strip the winter fuel allowance from 8.5 million pensioners so she can reward public sector unions for their collapsing productivity. In the 18 months before the election Reeves, who at the time was struggling to survive on a mere £91,346 a year (plus £28,185.95 in expenses claims for the year up to March 2024) had accepted £7,500 for “work clothes” from Labour donor Juliet Rosenfeld. Reeves admitted that it looked “a bit odd” for her wardrobe to be so generously funded by gifts, and denied that a further donation of £98,500 was spent on clothes or personal effects.

Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, also has her snout wedged firmly in the trough. Last year she received £14,000 from Alli which she used to pay for two social events. Although she admitted on Sunday that one of these events was “ahead of [her] birthday, so [she] was turning 40” she’s now backtracked and claimed the events were entirely work-related and absolutely not connected to her birthday.

We better not forget Lady Starmer, the Victoria Sponge. Alli bought her around £5,500 worth of designer clothes both before and after the election, as well as paying for alterations and hiring her a personal shopper. Starmer failed to declare these gifts on time, claiming he didn’t know bungs from party donors to close family members had to be registered.

Actually it seems most of them are at it. Since the beginning of the year, Labour MPs who are now in the cabinet have benefitted from no less than £753,017 in donations and £90,853 in gifts. Alli alone has financed at least seven members of Starmer’s cabinet. Has he had anything in return for his huge generosity?

Lord Alli Has Bought His Way In

Well, it rather looks like he has. The reason this whole scandal hit the headlines is that, in late August, the Sunday Times reported that Alli - despite having no government role - had been issued a security pass that gave him full access to 10 Downing Street. These passes are usually, for obvious reasons, only issued to people who work in Downing Street and need one to get to their office; Alli doesn’t work there and had no need for one. He got one, though, and promptly used it to organise a party for Labour donors in the Downing Street garden.

That’s just fluff, though. It now turns out that Matthew Faulding, who was in charge of selecting Labour’s parliamentary candidates for July’s election, worked for Lord Alli. Faulding is now the secretary of the Parliamentary Labour Party, and wields immense power over Labour MPs. Does he still work for Lord Alli? This is unclear. Newspapers are reporting that Faulding was on Alli’s political staff “on secondment” from BM Creative Management Limited. Who owns BM Creative Management Limited? That would be Lord Waheed Alli. Unfortunately Faulding’s LinkedIn profile seems to be AWOL so I can’t verify that he was one of Alli’s employees, but that’s what the papers are saying. Is it just coincidence that the man who infuriated many Labour members by parachuting Starmer loyalists into safe seats happens to work for the man who shovelled hundreds of thousands of pounds into the pockets of Starmer and his shadow ministers?

In opposition Labour frequently raged about gifts and donations to Conservative ministers and MPs, so at the very least they’ve now been exposed as massive hypocrites. In 2021 Boris Johnson redecorated his flat in Downing Street with help from a donor, and Starmer was livid. He accused Johnson of being “mired in sleaze, cronyism and scandal” - except now we know that, while he publicly slammed Tory greed, he was quietly trousering massive gifts himself. And yes, he was doing it quietly. Starmer failed to properly declare gifts no less than eight times between 2019 and 2022. You’d think he’d have learned from that, and made a proper declaration for the gifts Alli gave Lady Starmer, but apparently not.

The hypocrisy is bad enough - and let’s be clear; no British politician should be accepting any gift more expensive than a bottle of Scotch at Christmas - but since this scandal went public the arrogance, tone-deafness and sheer sense of entitlement of these sponging ministers is truly breathtaking. None of them show any sign of remorse at having taken such massive handouts from someone who seems to have been granted significant access and influence in return. They’ve also deployed some really annoying justifications for their greed.

Excuses, Excuses

First up was David Lammy, our barely coherent foreign secretary. Lammy blustered that Starmer and his wife needed to accept gifts of clothes so they could “look their best” while representing Britain. You know, because the wife of the leader of the opposition has to attend so many international summits. He went on to claim that the US president and first lady “have a huge budget, paid for by the taxpayer, so that they look their best on behalf of the US people.” If anyone else had said this I’d flatly say it’s a lie, but Lammy is so stupid we can’t really expect him to get anything right. In fact the US president gets no clothing allowance, and first ladies have to buy their own clothes too. Lammy also glossed over the fact that Starmer - who, let’s not forget, is a multimillionaire - could have bought his own clothes.

And then there was business secretary Jonathan Reynolds, who insisted to Times Radio that being handed a couple of grand’s worth of free Taylor Swift tickets is “not a perk of the job, it’s part of the job.” Reynolds justified this ludicrous claim by saying that “People want to engage with decision-makers.” Oh, OK; so if you expect to get to talk to the people who govern us you better be able to buy access with a hefty bribe of free hospitality? That’s alright, then!

Starmer himself, who has benefitted from several thousand pounds’ worth of free tickets to football games, petulantly whined that now he’s prime minister he can’t sit in the stands for security reasons (although Rishi Sunak somehow managed it) and claimed “never going to an Arsenal game again because I can’t accept hospitality is pushing it a bit far.” It never seems to have occurred to Starmer - who says most people would see him taking a small fortune in freebie tickets as “a perfectly sensible arrangement” - that he could pay for a seat in a box with his own money, of which he has a lot.

Bridget Phillipson, who (like both Starmers, Rayner, Lammy, chief secretary to the treasury Darren Jones and health secretary Wes Streeting) was given free Taylor Swift tickets, tried to shift the blame to one of her children. She said her child wanted to see the concert and claimed “it was a hard one to turn down” and “it’s hard to say no when you’re offered tickets”, before simpering “I’m in a fortunate position to be able to receive that.” Well, Bridget, as any good parent knows, it’s vital that you’re able to say no to your children.

Bluntly, this is absolutely sickening. It’s bad enough that Labour, after years of clamouring about Tory sleaze, turn out to be in the trough up to their ears too. It’s even worse that, now they’ve been caught in the act, they’re spewing these pathetic justifications for all the gifts and backhanders they’ve taken. There is no excuse for British politicians accepting gifts worth thousands of pounds. They get paid - rather generously, considering how inept most of them are - precisely so they don’t have to rely on the “huge generosity” of people who may want something in return. This corruption has to stop, and politicians have to stop insulting our intelligence with their ridiculous excuses. Seriously; if a multimillionaire can’t even work out why he should be buying his own clothes, what’s he doing running the country?

And Finally…

I’ve mentioned more than once that I’m a freelance writer. That’s how I pay my bills; I write things for clients. This is my full-time job and it takes up most of my time, which unfortunately means I can’t write on Substack as much as I’d like to. I really want to post more on here; western civilisation is facing a daunting set of challenges right now, and there are a lot of things I’d like to try to inform - and hopefully entertain - people about. Quite a lot of you seem to enjoy what I’m doing; last Friday this Substack passed the 500-subscriber mark, and 173 of those subscribers joined us in the last month alone. It’s both gratifying and humbling that so many of you have signed up to receive the things I write, and I want to reward you all by giving you as much content as possible.

Sadly I’m regularly distracted from writing for you by the vulgar necessity of having to do paid work. Unfortunately, unlike Keir Starmer, I don’t have any billionaire friends who’ll casually bung me £18,685 worth of suits, a slack handful of tickets for the VIP box at Emirates Stadium and the use of a penthouse in Covent Garden. Therefore, in the hope it will give me more free time to dedicate to Substack, from now on some of the things I post here will be for paid subscribers only. On the bright side, a paid subscription costs less than a pint of beer a month (half a pint, if you live in London) and will take off some of the commercial pressure so I can spend more time writing for you.

If you’re not in a position to become a paid subscriber right now, don’t worry; there will always be free content here. In fact, my plan is that the bulk of what I post will remain free - there will just be some pieces, perhaps one or two a week, exclusively for paid subscribers. Meanwhile, you can also help by sharing my posts as widely as possible and spreading the message. And, of course, keep reading my posts!