Keir Starmer bows to strain and refuses to simply accept free garments | International | EUROtoday

Forty-eight hours earlier than the Labour Party holds its annual convention in Liverpool, an occasion that was imagined to serve to rejoice the election victory on July 4, Keir Starmer has needed to backtrack on a difficulty that threatened to cloud the assembly. The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has introduced, by means of a spokesman for his Downing Street staff, that he’ll now not settle for donations within the type of perks corresponding to clothes, equipment or tickets for soccer and concert events.

Neither he nor the members of his Government. Because in the previous couple of hours a number of British media, such because the Financial Times o The Guardianhave revealed that the 2 strongest girls within the Executive, the Deputy First Minister, Angela Rayner, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, had additionally spent hundreds of euros from get together donors on clothes, with out indicating this within the House of Commons' register of pursuits.

Rayner had claimed in his assertion that he had acquired a “donation in kind to assist with the performance of parliamentary duties”, which turned out to be greater than 4,200 euros price of clothes. The present got here from Asian-born billionaire Waheed Alli, who has donated lots of of hundreds of euros to the Labour Party trigger.

Lord Alli gifted the prime minister's spouse, Victoria Starmer, a private assistant for purchasing, dressmaking and tailoring, price nearly 6,000 euros. The businessman gave Starmer himself round 22,000 euros price of fits and among the glasses he wears day-after-day, in addition to nearly 24,000 euros in lodging prices over the past election marketing campaign.

Minister Reeves acquired nearly £9,000 between January 2023 and May 2024, in 4 instalments, from a donor known as Juliet Rosenfeld, and used the cash to “support the work of the Labour spokesperson on the Economy [estaba entonces en la oposición]”All the amounts contributed, it has now been learned, were used to buy clothes.

Starmer has defended the legality and transparency of all the freebies he has received over the past few years. But while his government announces austerity measures, social cuts such as the withdrawal of help for pensioners to pay for gas and electricity and tax increases, the fact that no other British opposition leader has received such a large amount of gifts has put the prime minister on the ropes.

With a cumulative value of almost 120,000 euros, according to the newspaper The GuardianStarmer has received more perks in the form of suits, glasses, accessories, Premier League tickets and concerts than any other Labour leader.

The party's former economics spokesman – the “shadow” chancellor in British political jargon – John McDonnell has come down hard on Stamer. McDonnell was Jeremy Corbyn's number two, and the two boasted of the austerity of the traditional left. “The first Labour MP, Keir Hardie, [fundador del partido]“He did not wear fancy clothes funded by rich patrons, because as a matter of principle he refused to imitate the Conservatives and Liberals who wore their expensive tailcoats and silk top hats,” stated McDonnell, who not too long ago joined a dozen insurgent MPs within the Commons who voted towards the withdrawal of winter vitality advantages for pensioners. The get together suspended all of them as members of its parliamentary group for six months.

The bribery scandal has given oxygen to the Conservatives, mired in an inner battle to decide on a brand new chief and the goal of all of the Government's accusations to justify the poor state of the British financial system and the necessity to undertake “painful measures” to straighten out the accounts. “Far from serving the citizens, [Starmer prometió al inicio de su mandato que el suyo sería un Gobierno volcado en el servicio público]“Labour politicians seem more focused on serving themselves,” said Andrew Griffith, the current opposition spokesman for science and technology, on Friday.

Although the House of Commons’ Ethics Committee has been glad with Starmer’s explanations and has not launched an investigation, the strikes by the prime minister’s staff to change earlier entries within the Register of Interests, and in some instances reveal the true nature of the donations, have irritated many Labour members. As has the prime minister’s insistence, till Friday, on defending all these perks. As within the case of the greater than 40 passes to non-public containers that he acquired to observe Arsenal matches, of which he’s a die-hard fan, which he justified on the grounds of safety. His standing as chief of the opposition, he defined, prevented him from going to the stands with the remainder of the followers. “Not being able to go to an Arsenal match anymore because I am prohibited from accepting these hospitality passes seems a bit excessive to me,” Starmer protested final week. Few in his get together understood this justification.