Keir Starmer is alleged to have broken parliamentary rules by failing to declare donations of clothing for his wife from the Labour donor Waheed Alli.
The gifts to Victoria Starmer were not initially declared in the register of MPs’ interests, the Sunday Times reported.
Starmer approached the parliamentary authorities on Tuesday to make a late declaration after being given updated advice on what needed to be registered.
The donations reportedly covered the cost of a personal shopper, clothes and alterations for Lady Starmer before and after Labour’s election win in July.
MPs are required to register gifts and donations within 28 days.
The Tories have demanded a full investigation into the Starmers’ links with Lord Alli, who has donated £500,000 to Labour since 2020.
[…]
Last weekend it emerged that Alli had been given a Downing Street security pass temporarily without apparently having a government role.The row was dubbed the “passes for glasses” affair because the television mogul had previously donated tens of thousands of pounds worth of clothing, accommodation and “multiple pairs” of spectacles to the Labour leader. There is no suggestion that the peer has broken any rules.
Alli, 59, was the youngest member of the House of Lords when he was ennobled in 1998.
I think in isolation I wouldn’t care much about this. It still appears to be vastly less than the declarations made by other PMs and leaders, and much as the Tories want to make an issue of Lords being issued Downing Street passes it seems an entirely normal thing to me.
…but surely he knows how the Tories weaponise even the mildest appearance of nonsense against Labour (while they flaunt it with impunity) and foster the ignorance of, “They’re all the same,” to their advantage. This seems like the easiest bullet imaginable to dodge by simply not accepting gifts, and I’m baffled that he’s imperiling all the effort to restore normalcy to politics by not doing so.
Honestly, I don’t think politicians should be able to accept these kinds of gifts at all. The Tories are almost certainly worse and it is unfair that Labour is held to a higher standard in this regard, but at the same time I don’t think that excuses Starmer accepting more gifts than any Labour leader since 1997.
Especially when New New Labour’s whole pitch was competence and honesty. Hard to slang the Tories off for their obvious corruption when Starmer accepts every gift he’s offered.
Lol, why? He got the job, that’s all he was after. He never even attempted to hide the fact that he is just another maintainer of the status quo.