Keir Starmer is Labour’s king of freebies. He promised to clean up politics, but has accepted more free stuff than all his party’s leaders since 1997 combined: more than £100,000 in tickets, accommodation and clothing. In 2024, the Prime Minister said it was ‘right to repay’ the cost of some freebies, and stumped up for six Taylor Swift tickets, four tickets to the races and some clothes for his wife (total value: £6,000).
Where Starmer has led, his MPs have followed – including those who now might hope to succeed him. Eleven other Labour MPs (and Ed Davey) accepted Taylor Swift tickets courtesy of football clubs and music companies. Seven cabinet members took money from Lord Alli. Few have not watched a football match from complimentary box seats.
Lucy Powell proved popular with the Labour membership when she beat Starmerite candidate Bridget Phillipson to win the deputy leadership. The MP for Manchester Central, who is a Manchester City fan, racked up £40,000 in gifts for herself and her staff. Powell has defended accepting the freebies – including tickets to Man City games, cricket matches and the British Grand Prix – on the basis she was ‘attending in an official capacity’.
As shadow education secretary, Angela Rayner said she would ‘integrate’ Britain’s private schools. That didn’t stop her accepting £500 (donated to charity), flights and accommodation to give a talk in 2023 at the International School of Geneva, where fees are up to £35,000 a year. She also accepted £3,550 of clothing from Lord Alli and £2,230 in clothes from ME+EM, which sells ‘luxury and contemporary fashion with timeless style’. She has been pictured wearing one of the brand’s green suits, which prompted Grazia to say that she ‘understands the politics of fashion’ – but perhaps not the fashion of politics, which demands hair shirts.
Labour ministers like to combine business with pleasure. When he was foreign secretary, David Lammy took his Indian counterpart to watch a Tottenham Hotspur game from the chairman’s box; he donated the £250 value of his ticket to the Tottenham Hotspur Foundation. Lammy and his family have enjoyed comped visits to Tottenham games on other occasions, worth thousands. On his 50th birthday, he was presented with a personalised signed shirt (value: £90).
Ed Miliband enjoyed two trips to Glastonbury festival for speaking engagements (value: £3,087), and a trip to Tanworth’s Lunar festival. He watched My Neighbour Totoro at the Barbican, and at the Soho Place theatre he saw As You Like It, in which a new leader overthrows his own brother and casts him into exile, before abdicating and restoring harmony to the dukedom. Before Miliband became Net Zero Secretary, flying 50,000 miles in his first year, he travelled to Iceland to confront climate change, Kos to mull over population movement and Corfu to cultivate inclusiveness in times of crisis.
Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden’s two sets of Springsteen tickets suggest he was born to run. Other gifts – dinner at Sky Arts’ salon (£360), the Ivor Novello Awards (£1,920), the Brits (£3,000) and the Hay festival (£700) – show the breadth of his interests.
Wes Streeting laughed off being ‘outed as a Swiftie’ when he accepted £1,160 of tickets for the singer’s Eras tour from the Football Association. His declared interests reveal he’s an opera lover (The Elixir of Love at Glyndebourne, courtesy of FGS Global: £600) and enjoys attending literary festivals, including Hay in 2023 (£1,050, paid for by Sky Arts) and Cliveden last October (£2,498).
Some MPs’ registers of interests are notably sparse. Since entering parliament in 1997, Yvette Cooper has registered six entries under gifts, benefits and hospitality from UK sources, including accommodation for staff at party conference, and for herself at a Franco-British conference, plus two tickets for the 2021 Rugby League Challenge Cup final. Shabana Mahmood had just one entry: she accepted two tickets to an Aston Villa vs Manchester City game. John Healey also had just one: in 2000, he received a copy of a whistleblowing guide for employees, which he donated to Rotherham Central Library.
And Al Carns? Nothing.
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