Britain’s Labour prime minister Sir Keir Starmer didn’t win the July election due to public excitement for his policy agenda, about which quite little was known. His shallow victory had much more to do with the almost-universal resentment of Conservative governments which not only failed to deliver on such important issues as uncontrolled mass immigration, but also surrounded themselves in scandals and sleaze.
It has taken no more than a couple of months for the public to realise that Starmer’s lot won’t be any different.
In pubs and barbershops around the country, conversations turned this week to the fact a Labour donor bought more than £5,000 (€5,950) worth of high-end clothes for the prime minister’s wife, Victoria—rumoured to have included underwear.
For those who believed Labour would be ‘different,’ this is just a blotch on the whole image, which has seen Starmer receive more than £100,000’s worth (€119k) of gifts and freebies since December 2019, including free tickets to football matches and to a Taylor Swift concert. He has accepted far more than any other major party leader in recent times.
The full run-down of freebies—highlighted by political professor Matthew Goodwin—is quite extraordinary.
Officials are particularly concerned that Starmer’s continued acceptance of gifts could open him up to inappropriate lobbying on government regulatory decision making.
Ministers who were having pops at the Tories for similar behaviour just months ago have done their best to defend the gifts on their interview rounds.
At the same time, it has emerged that Starmer’s top aide, Sue Gray, earns more than the PM, after reportedly asking for—and being granted—a £170,000 (€202k) salary. This has prompted calls of “hypocrisy” after critics dug up Starmer’s criticism of the amount earnt by Dominic Cummings when he was the chief of staff to then-prime minister Boris Johnson.
And there are ongoing reports of cronyism, following the appointment of 12 Labour donors or advisers to the supposedly impartial civil service.
So much for promises to return to the “service of working people” and to “change Britain.” Everything, it seems, will actually remain the same.
