It has been a less than dignified start for Keir Starmer in Number 10. The Labour manifesto spoke of ending “the chaos of sleaze”. Notwithstanding the protestations Starmer made during the general election campaign and as he walked into Downing Street that this time ethical standards would be paramount, it has been on any view a shaky start. Some would say ethics are still on a decline. But has it been the same as the tsunami of scandals under Boris Johnson, with a few aftershocks under Sunak? I think not. To remind you, just taking the Ps, we had Patel and bullying, Partygate, Paterson and the retrospective overturning of penalties, Pincher and learned forgetfulness, and prorogation. I covered all this in detail in my book Downward Spiral.
So far, no policy has been changed following largesse by donors (unlike in the case of Bernie Ecclestone under Tony Blair), no public money was involved (unlike PPE contracts) and no laws have been broken, as in Partygate. There have been no widespread breaches of integrity, no true corruption and only minor chumocracy compared with what went before. Few, if any, rules have been broken—but then perhaps there has been something awry with the rules that apply. There was for some time a failure to disclose the freebies received by ministers and the communications were certainly not ideal.
Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, claimed that “freebies” were “part of the job” while David Lammy rather lamely said it was necessary for donors to buy their clothes so “they can look their best” when representing the nation. Harriet Harman warned Labour’s senior ministers not to use excuses as it would make things worse, which indeed it did. She warned Starmer that taking such donations was unacceptable. The PM was slightly self-righteous and sometimes got angry when asked about freebies; but the story kept on and on, and doubling down on his defence made things worse.
What we have seen is some misjudgement heaped upon misjudgement, seasoned by some crassness and more than a little lack of wisdom and forethought. It all seems a bit cheap and sordid, but there is no constitutional crisis, as there threatened to be in the case of Partygate. There is no integrity vacuum at the heart of the government and it is dangerous to view the misjudgement of Starmer and the chaos of Johnson as in any sense similar.
Gifts and freebies
The heart of it is that Starmer clearly needed a rebrand a year before the expected general election, and he accepted gifts (lots of them) for (high-end) glasses and clothes from a Labour peer, Lord Waheed Alli. The presents kept on coming as though it were Christmas every week. Starmer declared £107,145 in gifts; £16,000 on clothing and almost £40,000 in football tickets since December 2019. Alli also bought £5,000 worth of clothes for Victoria Starmer. This was dubbed Frockgate. The presents to Victoria were not declared in the parliamentary list of interests in the necessary 28 days, apparently on the basis that there was no requirement for such disclosure. He also lavished £16,200 on “work clothing” for Starmer (admittedly, he did need something) and £2,485 on glasses.
Note however that Lord Alli, the generous donor, had already been a peer for decades (although not very talkative in the House of Lords), so he was not seeking to curry favour by making these donations, unlike many folks during the Johnson years (including Richard Sharpe, who was an intermediary in arranging a loan for Johnson at a time when he was hoping to become chair of the BBC). Alli is best known for being the business partner some years ago of Bob Geldof in breakfast TV, but he also chaired the fashion giant Asos. When appointed in 1998 he was the youngest peer in history. He chaired party fundraising before the election and had given £500,000 to the Labour party.
The story (inevitably broken by Gabriel Pogrund of the Sunday Times) emerged when it was reported that Alli had a pass which gave him full access to Number 10 for reasons unknown, although he was said to have attended only political (and not ministerial) meetings held there. It was known as “passes for glasses”.
Several other members of the cabinet received gifts totalling more than £20,000. There were also holidays and hospitality in friends’ houses. Angela Rayner stayed in Alli’s New York pad over Christmas with her ex-partner Sam Tarry, a former MP. Starmer used what was said by the press to be a £18m penthouse belonging to Alli in Floral Street in Covent Garden. This stay was partially explained by the (natural) need to protect the Starmers’ son during his important exam period when the family house in Kentish Town was besieged by paparazzi and protestors. Starmer has repaid some of the money since arriving at Number 10.
Arsenal and conflict
Starmer also accepted hospitality in the form of a seat in an Arsenal directors’ box for one match. This was explained away by security concerns over his sitting in the stands, as he had done for many years at his local club. This is more serious, however, as there was a potential conflict of interest. The Labour manifesto promised a football regulator. Clive Betts, a Labour MP and the chair of the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on football, said: “I don’t think [the clubs] can influence the regulator being set up, but they can influence what powers it has.” Ministers are told to avoid hospitality from any organisation involved in or linked to a regulatory decision that is under review.
Indeed, the Premier League and top clubs gave more than £100,000 to MPs. It was a major footie fest. The league also gave five MPs tickets to the Brit Awards, as well as six Labour MPs tickets to a Taylor Swift concert totalling no less than £14,830. Starmer also accepted tickets from Cain International (a property company) for a Chelsea versus Arsenal match in October 2023.
The gifts that really captured the public imagination, however, were the four Taylor Swift tickets for Starmer with a value of £2,800—probably because the whole nation was united in jealousy. This looked especially bad given that the star had been given special treatment in police escorts through London after previous concerts in Vienna had been called off when a plot against her was discovered.
Some of the gifts were lavish; an Anya Hindmarch bag (whatever that is) for Rachel Reeves and £22,000 (no less) for a branded vehicle for Angela Rayner. The problem is, of course, the subconscious impact of hospitality; the appearance of potential conflict, even if there is none, reduces public trust.
Some other things seem to just be a needless extravagance on public funds. The personal photographer for Angela Rayner is firmly within that category. I hope the photos are worth the political aggravation.
But let’s get this into perspective: even according to the official register, Boris Johnson accepted more in gifts for doing up his Number 10 flat than Starmer has ever done. Nor do we know the precise sums for the cost of Johnson’s wedding party and gourmet food over Covid etc, which came courtesy of the JCB-owning Bamford family.
Secondees
Another area of ethical concern is the money to pay for researchers from outsiders, usually secondees from banks or management consultancies, whom the Labour party accepted while in opposition. Some have since come into government. Their involvement did not need to be declared. OpenDemocracy reported that they included a lobbyist from Teneo, a major global consultancy with clients including McDonald’s, Santander, Thames Water, Unilever, Tata Steel and Equitix.
Appointments
Civil service appointments are made following a competition unless an exception is applied for and obtained. The Civil Service Commission (CSC) granted more than 60 exceptions between the general election and late August, and in some of the cases it acted without the appropriate level of information being provided. Ian Corfield was approved for his civil service role with an exception but without the CSC being told that he was a donor to Rachel Reeves’s campaign. He had been a Labour adviser and was made a director in the Treasury, a position from which he stepped down when the controversy over what had not been disclosed took off.
Jess Sargeant flew into a senior civil service job in the Cabinet Office’s “propriety and constitution group”, having been a staff member at Labour Together, the Starmerite thinktank.
Emily Middleton was appointed as a senior civil servant—as director general for digital centre design at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. She had been previously seconded by the Public Digital consultancy to Peter Kyle, who became the minister at the department. The note from the Permanent Secretary’s office to the CSC supporting the nomination did mention that she had been on secondment to the Labour party before the election, but did not include the relevant fact that she had been employed at Labour Together as a policy fellow. The letter went on to say “This is a new priority role within the department and needs to be filled immediately…”
What next?
All of this feeds into the popular narrative that politicians are all in it for themselves. Trust in politicians has declined to an all-time low. Max Hastings in his Times column noted that while “there are not enough talented ascetics to fill a cabinet”, accepting gifts is not a good look. The public view the freebies as sheer greed.
When Rosie Duffield, the MP for Canterbury, resigned from the Labour party some 80 days after the election she accused Starmer of “hypocrisy”, given his strong declaration that this would be a government of integrity. She went on to say that “the sleaze, nepotism and apparent avarice are off the scale… I am so ashamed of what you and your inner circle have done to tarnish and humiliate our once proud party.” Many said, hear, hear.
This imbroglio should render the ethics reforms Labour planned in opposition more urgent but, ironically, may make it harder politically for the government to make the necessary reforms to restore standards in public life, as it will cause all this to be replayed constantly in the media. The group of ministers around Starmer do not seem to have the ring of being corrupt (unlike some of the Johnsonian horde) but they have certainly demonstrated naïvety. None of these, however, are hanging offences.
The Johnsonian memoir Unleashed reminds us of the torrid time when he was in office. There is the peril of false equivalence in saying all politicians are the same, but Labour put itself on a pedestal; in its first hundred days, it came close to falling off.
