Keir Starmer has paid back more than £6,000 worth of gifts – including Taylor Swift tickets and a clothing deal for his wife – as top donor Lord Alli is probed by the Parliamentary watchdog for “non-registration of interests”. The Mail has more.
The PM is covering the cost of six Taylor Swift tickets, four tickets to the races and a rental agreement with a high-end designer favoured by Lady Victoria Starmer.
It comes after he was dubbed “Free Gear Keir” over his frequent acceptance of lavish gifts and hospitality, which he has continued since entering Downing Street in July.
Following a backlash, the PM has committed to overhauling rules for ministers to ensure better transparency about what is provided.
His announcement that he is paying back some of his gifts coincided with the publication of an update to the MPs’ register of interests.
It also came shortly after it was disclosed that one of his top donors, Lord Waheed Alli, is being probed by a House of Lords watchdog over “alleged non-registration of interests”.
The House of Lords Commissioners for Standards said the millionaire businessman was being investigated over possible breaches of Peers’ code of conduct.
But it is understood the probe does not relate to donations and instead is a “clerical element” of already declared interests.
Gifts paid for by Sir Keir include four Taylor Swift tickets from Universal Music Group totalling £2,800, two from the Football Association at a cost of £598, and four to Doncaster Races from Arena Racing Corporation at £1,939.
An £839 clothing rental agreement with Edeline Lee, the designer recently worn by his wife to London Fashion Week, along with one hour of hair and makeup, was also covered by the PM.
Sir Keir this afternoon said it was “right” for him to repay the donations while new principles for accepting gifts were drawn up.
Worth reading in full.
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I don’t get the Taylor Swift thing. I don’t know anything about her. Presumably a young upcoming pop star. Why would men of my age be wanting to attend I find this is a bit creepy. What is it about this person that would make you engage in fraudulent activities to see them when you could easily afford to pay out of your own pocket. I wanna say occult abasement ritual but not sure.
Nah. Keir going to a Taylor Swift concert would probably be just a PR exercise. Signaling to the youth that under that dull exterior he is actually a really cool guy.
Well, unfortunately it did in fact happen, at least once. Starmer is officially a ‘Swifty’. Taylor Swift is a hardcore Demtard and endorses Commiela Harris.
I wonder if this paying back of gifts is his version of living up to his promise to ”Take Back Control”, but unless it’s referring to reclaiming his TV remote I really don’t have high hopes of him doing anything meaningful going by his performance so far. This clip is cringe, but my suspicion is that if Swift were a Trump supporter he would probably sound less enthusiastic and wouldn’t attend any concerts;
https://x.com/Chishol92148373/status/1840827551394189371
This is like the cheapest form of student politics. I mean regardless of how things might look, The fact that they thought they could get away with this is very suggestive. They might still maintain the conceit that they can indeed get away with it because of their majority but this would be very foolish on a political level in our times. One struggles for a term or aphorism, high on their own supply perhaps. Drunk with years of masturbatory ignorance. They have not only destroyed their own political careers but they jave also caused a major slump in economic confidence in this country. The real ruling class are all into managed decline but in their own time and they will put a stop to him almost as quickly as they did to Truss.
Agreed on yr ritual comment. Seems Swift follows in long line from Beatles – perhaps most visible in the unnatural hysteria induced. See brilliant Chris Rea music industry analysis a few months ago for deep dive.
What’s even more weird is letting another man buy your wife clothes….Cuck Starmer maybe?
Arguably the ‘monarch’ feels that graciously accepting gifts and tributes is a mark of his respect towards the supplicant.
The relationship is not giving Starmer stuff but the opportunity for the giver to feel blessed. Which perhaps suggests why Starmer was so affronted to be called out on such matters – he was only doing the gracious thing expected of a man of power and influence.
This is the end of the cycle. Leaders will appear and be gone more and more quickly. There can be no notion of leadership according to the old ways. Lao Tse said of leaders that the worst are ahaed or feared, better leaders are loved but the true leaders are invisible in that they made you feel like you did it yourself. This gremlin is the very opposite of that. A scumbag on every level imaginable. An authoritarian who is also a cowardly self-serving greedy monstrosity. Even erstwhile Labour supporters can see that now.
I agree. The end of the cycle.
And once they are gone, they are immediately forgotten like they never existed.
In the old leaders, flawed human beings as they were, at least there was an element of greatness. Alexander the Great and Napoleon. These are just holograms. Behind the suit, there is nothing, or indeed some gremlin-like creature.
I get the principle but Starmer will never be forgotten or forgiven once the first Pensioner dies this winter. Every pensioner will be counted and every single one will be on Starmer. When you get a frost up here in West Yorkshire in September you know it is going to be a bad winter. Starmer will have to resign next year.
Well he famously made that comment about preferring to be at Davos than Westminster, so we know where his loyalties lie and that he’s a WEF muppet. Another one. Talking of loyalties, he’s in Brussels today. Is he wanting to reverse Brexit or something? ”Take back control” indeed;
”Sir Keir Starmer is in Brussels today for his first bilateral meeting with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen since he became prime minister in July. This official engagement is further evidence of the Labour government’s growing threat to British voters’ 2016 decision to leave the European Union.
Long-time Remainer Starmer, who once fought for the Brexit referendum to be overturned, looks set to agree to a ‘youth mobility scheme’ during upcoming negotiations with Brussels. One migration expert told The European Conservative that such a deal is “literally synonymous with freedom of movement, an institution that the British public steadfastly rejected in 2016.”
Senior Labour figures have long advocated for a youth mobility scheme, which would allow European adults under the age of 30 to remain in the UK (and vice versa) for a certain period of time. A cagey Starmer has, up till now, responded that there are “no plans” to accept such a deal, which hardly constitutes its total rejection.
Formal negotiations, which are set to begin next year, are bound to result in the UK bowing down to Brussels and accepting their rules. It is certainly difficult to picture the opposite being the case.”
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/starmer-wants-uk-to-put-brexit-years-behind-us-and-work-in-lockstep-with-brussels/
Bye bye Starmer. Unlike your predecessors you will find no resting place or refuge regardless of your banking connections because even they find you disgusting and odious and incompetent. You will go the way of all dead wood.
There’s all these rumours of some sleazy secret flying around too. Is he supposed to have a secret child somewhere? Personally I couldn’t give a toss about any politicians private life, I mean, look at how many kids Johnson has and who he ended up marrying, just so long as it doesn’t impact on their ability to do their job. We know none of them are saints anyway, but I do respect the fact that high profile figures ( such as well-hated politicians ) would want to keep their kids out of the picture and the public eye, whether illegitimate or not;
”BREAKING: MAJOR DEVELOPMENT ON KEIR STARMER’S “BIG SECRET” TERRIFYING NUMBER 10
Guido Fawkes boss Paul Staines tells Outspoken the story rocking Westminster is about shape of PM’s family.
He reveals: “We have a name. As do the Mail and the Telegraph. We have a birth certificate.”
https://x.com/danwootton/status/1841545681590173744
Perhaps it involves Alli and a surrogate?
Not good enough, he has to resign. This is not going away. He stated a few years ago that upto 4,000 pensioners would die if May took away the fuel allowance. Yet he has taken over £500,000 in over just 4 years.What most papers are reporting is the tip of the iceberg, his bungs are, seriously, over half a million.
I wrote to my local MP to find a conscience and resign the whip. I will be posting her response on the local Facebook groups and she comes from Wakefield, it’s not like she has been parachuted in.
So Starmer thinks it ‘right’ to pay back £6000 after it’s all hit the fan! Didn’t seem to occur to him that it might not be ‘right’ to accept the gifts and favours in the first place. What an insult to the electorate.
He hid £16,000, claimed it was office expenses. Labour quietly adjusted it to a clothing bung. He has taken over half a million in 4 years and pays back 6 which doesn’t even cover his football tickets.
Half a million = 1,666 frozen pensioners.
Despicable.
He stood at the podium and said that up until now, the acceptance of “gifts” was down to individual Ministers’ personal judgement. But he was now going to put Rules in place.
He’s demonstrated he has no personal judgement whatsoever …. and now just confirmed it. He really is an absolute, amoral moron isn’t he!
“Gifts paid for by Sir Keir include four Taylor Swift tickets from Universal Music Group totalling £2,800”
How can four Taylor Swift tickets cost £2,800, that’s £700 per ticket!
I thought Bruce Springsteen tickets were expensive at £140.
If we have to endure another 5 years of unsurprising Westminster tittle tattle on this site you can count me out
Can we stick to the important stuff please?
You don’t have to read everything on this site. Just skip it if you’re not interested.
Indeed – but I have two issues with it:
1) The limited energies and resources of DS should go in better directions – more of the often excellent original articles and links to more in depth investigations
2) It just seems like part of the eternal Punch & Judy show that politics seems to have become, and I don’t think we should be taking part in that as it’s a distraction from what’s really going on
Starmer and the MSM, DS to a degree, all miss the key point:
Professional and moral standards in Public Office should dictate at all times the refusing of all gifts, because they all have a string attached, thickness according to value.
Doing a search for “Peers’ Code of Conduct” first produced guidelines for peer support for drug recoverers! Disregarding that potential Freudian slip by the search engine, I found the [probably relevant] HoP Rules:
It starts off, encouragingly, by saying:
“Members should decline all but the most insignificant or incidental hospitality, benefit or gift offered by a lobbyist.”
<Cup o’ tea fine; Arsenal home to Tottenham not>
…but then including later a whole section condoning receipt of “Gifts, benefits and hospitality” so long as they [over £100~300] are declared and recorded.
When working several years back in the quite high-level corporate~private sector, we had clients declining even a ‘Thank you’ bottle of wine at Christmas because it “breached their Corporate Rules about receiving gifts” as it could be viewed as a bribe.
This whole Stalinmer episode, and all those before involving all HoP residents, with not the slightest sign of regret nor remorse, demonstrates plainly the problem we face.
Anti bribery and corruption laws (ABAC) in the UK corporate world are very clear – surprising it’s not so clear for government given they created them!
To hang on to all the ‘gifts’ seems sleazy to me. To give back some of the money is a bureaucrat’s response. A principled person would not have accepted anything beyond a bottle of wine or a t-shirt.
‘Principled person’ and ‘Member of Parliament’ are seldom phrases that naturally go together. There are rare exceptions – Andrew Bridgen comes to mind- but they’re as rare as hen’s teeth.
To paraphrase Samuel Johnson: “Public Office is the last Refuge of the Scoundrel”
So Keir-Ching! obviously thinks keeping the other £100,000 ……and paying no tax on it ……. is acceptable.
Amoral, avarice, hypocrisy …. all the qualities of a post-Blair Labour Leader ….. and rumbled within weeks of entering No.10.
Pretty sad really when the PM of a western democracy, former chief prosecutor has to be shamed into coughing up for a few of the freebies he received. And why does a man of his obvious wealth need somebody else to pay for his suits and glasses?
But did Conservative MPs never receive freebies from anyone? Is this really some novelty scandal, exclusive to the Labour government? I find that a bit hard to believe.
Probably – however Labour have gone on about the sleaze for so long it’s hardly surprising they are being judged on their deeds vs their words