Starmer was citing "security reasons" for accepting a box late last season too Also, from what I understand, right now the biggest threats to Starmer come from the remarkably ticked off Chief Rabbi and Board of Deputies...
This is somehow even worse than yesterday's senility of asking Johnny Carson to host The Tonight Show again, in spite being dead since 2005
Your defence was Starmer bought a ticket as LOTO (which he didn't, he was getting comped a box towards the end of last season too) in response to him getting comped a box as PM Which unintentionally sounds much worse
...uh oh, turns out that Starmer's defence for the latest freebie coming to light is already unravelling What is it with Starmer MPs using their children as human shields, anyway? We had two of them blame their kids for accepting free Taylor Swift tickets, now this
He has literally bought a season ticket for years. I expect many high profile people get upgraded sometimes. This is a non story
It can't logically matter what he spent gifts on though. There should be more stringent laws on gifts but while there are not he has done nothing wrong.
To a point and in essence I agree with you. However, for a politician, a PM-in waiting, heading to No 10 on a strong anti-sleaze agenda, he should have seen that the optics of this would not look good. In fact, I'm more concerned about this lack of foresight. To be honest, he could have kick-started his political program by foregoing this usual Arsenal attendances for a few months and using the rationale to support the policy.
Completely agree. It's hardly surprising that it's blown up in his face and probably even less surprising that the left are joining in the pile-on. But if this is the worst mistake he makes then he will be our best PM ever.
I wouldn't go that far... And making the mistake so early is unfortunately going to stay with him and hinder the positive aspects of their agenda. Same with the Winter Fuel issue. It's totally right that those benefits need to be reformed and means-tested, but it should have been announced as part of a much more comprehensive and detailed program, with much clearer safeguards for those most likely to be impacted. Considering they have had a year or more to prepare for Government, their Comms management is piss poor, sadly.
Another £20k backhander from Lord Alli and his immediate defence is to throw his son under the bus certainly counts as "something wrong"
Whoever is in charge of Labour's messaging surely has to be Googling the quickest route to a cliff at this point, because not only have they undermined so many of their narratives going into the election but their response has been utterly shambolic - to the point where you have to wonder if they never bothered to prepare for any worst case scenarios as they expected the easy ride the press had given them for the past 2-3 years to continue When you have two MPs blame their kids for them accepting free Taylor Swift tickets followed by Starmer blaming his son for accepting another one of Lord Alli's many, many "gifts" in the space of a few days, and Starmer refusing to apologise for getting caught with his hand in the cookie jar in spite given four opportunities to do so in the same interview, they're actively inviting this to run and run And the thing is, the coverage is actively missing the main story: we know that the proposed digital services tax increase from 2% to 10% was dropped after Jonathan Reynolds was gifted a couple of Glastonbury tickets from Youtube, and we know Rachel Reeves torpedoed the £28bn green investment pledge a few months ago after getting a £10k "donation" from Lord Donoughue and his climate sceptic mates, so the story shouldn't be what freebies are being given out - but whether there's a link to the freebies and sudden shifts in policy that just so happen to occur within a week of the "gift"
