THE Labour Party conference has got underway in Liverpool.
What ought to have been a triumphal and happy occasion for the party has been completely overshadowed by widespread despair both within and without the party at the decisions to retain the two child cap on benefits and to abolish the universal entitlement of pensioners to the winter fuel allowance, a move which was sharply criticised by the Labour Party when there were reports that the previous Conservative government had been considering it. But these controversies have been eclipsed by anger over Keir Starmer's addiction to expensive freebies. Starmer has accepted over £100,000 worth of personal gifts from donors since 2019, including designer suits and glasses, clothing for his wife, and thousands of pounds worth of concert and football tickets. Starmer is by far and away the MP who is the recipient of the greatest largesse from political donors, taking over twice as much in the value of declared gifts as the next greediest MP, and more than the following five combined.
Starmer has accepted over £10,000 in hospitality from the English Premier League while it is campaigning against a new system of regulation, leading to accusations of a conflict of interest. The millionaire Starmer has a long history of entitlement to luxury that he doesn't feel the need to pay for himself.
READ MORE: Anas Sarwar slated over 'party before people' Labour conference speech
Over the five years when he was the director of the Crown Prosecution service(CPS), Starmer racked up an expenses bill of almost £250,000 including over £160,000 for a chauffeur-driven car in London despite living just four miles from the Crown Prosecution Service office. Starmer's huge bill for travel expenses came despite the fact that the post is based in London and is not generally understood to entail much travel.
Starmer's successor in the job, Alison Saunders, served the same five-year term as Starmer but had a travel expenses bill less than a third of the size. Her travel expenses over her five years in office came to £67,340.
In his first 21 months in the job, Starmer claimed £161,273 for the use of a chauffeur-driven car. At the time he lived in Kentish Town, a mere four miles from the CPS office in central London. Starmer’s on-demand car cost the taxpayer an average of £1,920 a week for nearly two years. Even though he had access to the car, he billed the taxpayer a further £330 for 13 taxi rides across London. Starmer stopped using the car in June 2010 soon after the story broke in the media.
Starmer has continued to pocket luxury freebies as an MP, and recently defended his decision to accept free hospitality at football matches, claiming it's the only way he is able to see the football, and dismissing pleas for him to stop taking free tickets, saying that he's saving the taxpayer money as security would cost far more if he bought his own ticket in the stands. So, his acceptance of luxury freebies is really a selfless act on his part to do us all a good turn. Glad he's cleared that up.
The furore surrounding Starmer's addiction to free bling was overshadowing the Labour Party conference so in an effort to defuse the issue, Labour announced that Starmer and other government ministers will no longer accept gifts of clothing. Nothing was said about gifts of free hospitality and tickets, which total far more in value than the gifts of clothing. Perhaps Starmer is hoping we won't notice since our glasses are far less expensive than his.
This story has resonated since Starmer came into office promising change and above all a change from the entitlement of politicians and public austerity which we got under the Tories. But only a couple of months into Labour rule it's the drearily familiar tale of greedy politicians helping themselves while imposing "tough decisions" on the rest of us. Funny how they never impose those "tough decisions" on themselves.
Anas Sarwar’s dismal vision for Scotland
Today, Anas Sarwar is set to address the Labour party conference delivering a fantasy politics speech in which he will pretend that Scotland is already economically independent of the UK and a decade and a half of Conservative austerity and squeezes on the Scottish block grant have had nothing at all to do with problems in Scottish public services.
Likewise he will lay the blame for the axing of the universal entitlement to the winter fuel payment for pensioners in Scotland entirely at the door of the SNP, as though Rachel Reeves suddenly and without warning slashing £160 million from the Scottish block grant had nothing whatsoever to do with it.
As SNP MP Dave Doogan pointed out on the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland programme: "The Scottish Government can’t magic money. “It has to come in a budget grant from the United Kingdom.
“If we want to invest £160 million, it should have been coming as a consequence of people across the rest of the UK getting their Winter Fuel Payment.
“Where is that money going to come from? Anas Sarwar can’t tell us. But he’s very happy to point out that it could come from somewhere but he won’t say where.”
So Anas Sarwar is trying to shore up Labour’s credibility in Scotland but of course people in Scotland aren’t daft and they realise that he is the principal defender here of the indefensible at Westminster.
Naturally Anas Sarwar will tell us that talk of independence is "divisive" and a "distraction" instead of being key to ensuring that Scotland's wealth and natural resources are used to benefit the people of Scotland and to develop public services and infrastructure in Scotland.
He'll present a depressing and dismal vision in which a marginal improvement on the belt tightening we have experienced under Westminster for decades is the absolute best that Scotland can aspire to.
This piece is an extract from today’s REAL Scottish Politics newsletter, which is emailed out at 7pm every weekday with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from the Wee Ginger Dug.
To receive our full newsletter including this analysis straight to your email inbox, click HERE and click the "+" sign-up symbol for the REAL Scottish Politics.
Why are you making commenting on The National only available to subscribers?
We know there are thousands of National readers who want to debate, argue and go back and forth in the comments section of our stories. We’ve got the most informed readers in Scotland, asking each other the big questions about the future of our country.
Unfortunately, though, these important debates are being spoiled by a vocal minority of trolls who aren’t really interested in the issues, try to derail the conversations, register under fake names, and post vile abuse.
So that’s why we’ve decided to make the ability to comment only available to our paying subscribers. That way, all the trolls who post abuse on our website will have to pay if they want to join the debate – and risk a permanent ban from the account that they subscribe with.
The conversation will go back to what it should be about – people who care passionately about the issues, but disagree constructively on what we should do about them. Let’s get that debate started!
Callum Baird, Editor of The National
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel