Labour discovers price of freebies in our democracy

Good morning. One problem with living in an advanced democracy is that the political scandals can feel a little low-rent: at least in global terms. 

Boris Johnson did his best to raise Britain’s banana-republic game with his illegal parties and expensive wallpaper and free hampers and holidays and free temporary home and (pauses for breath) loaned wedding venue and some sloppy PPE procurement that enriched some Tory-adjacent entrepreneurs. Not to mention his meeting with an ex-KGB agent at an Italian palazzo without officials present when he was foreign secretary in 2018. 

And yet. Our ministers don’t tend to buy themselves golden candlesticks on the public purse. They don’t tend to siphon off billions of taxpayers’ money and store it in Swiss bank accounts or vast dachas adorned with Fior di Bosco marble. 

British political scandal usually involves bending of the rules, conflicts of interest, potential conflicts of interest, disclosure failures and gifts from generous business donors. More on Waheed Alli in a bit. 

And then there are those moments when questions are raised about whether politician x received y privilege because they took action z. We’ll come back to Taylor Swift later.

Following the money in politics

One frequent mine of such revelations is the sometimes iffy nature of the revolving doors between government and business. 

With many of these stories there is always someone griping from the side lines, and asking the question: who cares what the politician did if they didn’t break the law/rules/guidelines?  

They asked it when the FT broke the scoop about David Cameron lobbying Tory cabinet ministers on behalf of his questionable employer, Greensill Capital. It’s true that Cameron did not break any rules, and yet somehow Greensill became the target of 13 separate inquiries involving everyone from the Treasury select committee to the Serious Fraud Office.  

Sometimes, it requires a Fleet Street scandal for the rules writers to reappraise the rules.

Former Tory MP Peter Viggers was blocked from buying a £1,645 duck house on his expenses because it breached parliamentary guidelines — but plenty of other questionable expense claims were approved by officials before the Telegraph-led revelations of 2009. Many MP expense claims were allowed — but didn’t pass the public sniff test. 

To be fair, minor scandals often get as much airtime as major scandals. That was true in the early days of the last Labour government in the late 1990s.

On the micro end was former lobbyist Derek Draper boasting to an undercover journalist that he was friends with loads of senior government figures.

At the more disreputable end was Tony Blair exempting Formula 1 from a tobacco advertising ban after Labour took £1mn from its boss Bernie Ecclestone. Labour returned the donation and said that it had zero link to the policy decision. Sure.

The good news about living in a democracy with a free press is that journalists are free to write stories about the government and voters are free to decide whether they are accurate, sensational or fair. The scrutiny helps keep things relatively clean. 

So what to make of the freebies scandal which has engulfed Prime Minister Keir Starmer this summer, and the questions he now faces over a Taylor Swift concert? 

Stories that Starmer took more freebies than any other MP in the last parliament were a legitimate area for reporting because they cast a different light on the hitherto “Puritan” MP for Holborn and St Pancras. Starmer was meant to be the anti-Johnson.

The fact that he took £32,000 of clothing from Lord Alli also raises questions over his judgment: why be beholden to one single tycoon for your workwear, and why need quite so much of it? For context: only five other MPs registered free clothing from external donors in the entire decade to 2023. 

Likewise it turned out that thousands of pounds of cash for free clothing were lavished on Angela Rayner, deputy prime minister (from Lord Alli) and chancellor Rachel Reeves (from someone else) which were recorded in the register of interests as “for undertaking parliamentary duties” and “to support the shadow chancellor’s office”. 

They have since been reassured by the parliamentary authorities that it’s OK to record financial donations used to buy clothes as office costs. 

Fine. But please, Labour, don’t keep claiming that everything was fully “transparent” to the public. It really wasn’t.

Also, Labour has never come fully clean on what exactly Alli was doing advising Sue Gray on preparations for government — and why he had a temporary Downing Street pass.

The Taylor Swift story is a strange one. On the face of it, it seems pretty normal that the world’s biggest superstar would get blue-light police escort to her sellout gigs at Wembley Stadium — just days after she had to cancel three concerts in Austria due to a foiled terror plot by Isis. Especially if there was any chance of her cancelling the gigs — big events economically — without the police escort.

And maybe it’s not abnormal for the prime minister, who meets VIPs day in, day out, to meet Swift. Apparently their discussion was about the horrific murder of three young girls at a Swift-themed dance class in Southport in late July.

So maybe when it comes to this scandal, Starmer will easily shake it off. 

But anyone paying close attention to the details over the last fortnight may still have questions. 

Firstly, the Metropolitan Police’s special escort group of motorcyclists (SEG) is usually only available to senior cabinet ministers and some — not all — members of the royal family. 

Secondly, Met decisions are supposed to be free from political interference. And on this occasion they warned that giving Swift “VIP” protection would break its usual protocols.

Yet the attorney-general, Lord Hermer, was called in by the government to press the police into providing the blue light escort for the singing sensation. Who asked him to do that?

Starmer subsequently took four free tickets to a Swift gig from her music partner Universal Music Group. Downing Street has “completely rejected” the idea that the tickets were a thank you for the police escort. But given the unusual nature of the situation, was it wise for the prime minister to accept? 

Make up your own mind: but the fact that he has since paid back the money suggests that Starmer himself has had second thoughts. Let me know what you made of it at [email protected].

Now try this

I’ve gathered a stack of books for next week’s gruelling flight to Samoa for the Commonwealth Heads of Government summit. The new Robert Harris, two books by Graham Greene, an Ian Rankin, Of Mice and Men, an Ali Smith and a Bowie biography. I won’t read them all on the 72-hour return trip but it’s good to have a choice.

The book I just finished, for the second time, was Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, about cloned children whose organs are harvested by the state. It’s a slowbuild emotional journey which is all the more haunting for being described in Ishiguro’s sparse, understated prose.

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