Why Labour sleaze matters

Labour has come under the spotlight for accepting over £800,000 in gifts. Is this just crony politics as usual?

Labour Leader Delivers His First Speech To Party Conference As Prime Minister
(Image credit: Christopher Furlong / Staff)

It did not take long for the new government to be plunged into sleaze allegations. Prime minister Keir Starmer has accepted tens of thousands of pounds of free gifts, including free glasses, suits, boxes at Arsenal games, Taylor Swift tickets, and, perhaps most extraordinarily of all, free clothing for his wife. Most dual-earning couples well into the top tax bracket can easily afford their own glasses, but not, it seems, the Starmers. 

Chancellor Rachel Reeves, despite preaching austerity for everyone else, has accepted free clothes, which were then oddly described as “office expenses” on her official declarations. Education secretary Bridget Phillipson accepted a £14,000 donation from Waheed Alli, a Labour peer, to pay for, among other things, a birthday party. The list goes on and on. 

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Matthew Lynn

Matthew Lynn is a columnist for Bloomberg, and writes weekly commentary syndicated in papers such as the Daily Telegraph, Die Welt, the Sydney Morning Herald, the South China Morning Post and the Miami Herald. He is also an associate editor of Spectator Business, and a regular contributor to The Spectator. Before that, he worked for the business section of the Sunday Times for ten years. 

He has written books on finance and financial topics, including Bust: Greece, The Euro and The Sovereign Debt Crisis and The Long Depression: The Slump of 2008 to 2031. Matthew is also the author of the Death Force series of military thrillers and the founder of Lume Books, an independent publisher.