Gary Neville ‘alarmed at the scrutiny’ Keir Starmer is facing for football freebies
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Football pundit Gary Neville is “alarmed at the amount of scrutiny” Keir Starmer has received for accepting free football tickets and a hospitality box to watch his favourite team.
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In brief…
- The News Agents interview Gary Neville at the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool about Keir Starmer’s football freebies.
- The pundit has no issues with Starmer accepting free tickets, and points out that he broke no rules in doing so.
- Neville claims the Conservative Party did not receive the same level of scrutiny for doing things he deems far more corrupt.
Gary Neville is 'alarmed' at the amount of scrutiny Keir Starmer is getting over football gifts
What’s the story?
You might be used to watching Gary Neville on Monday nights’, tearing his hair out over Manchester United’s defending and arguing away with Jamie Carragher.
But the football pundit also has a thing or two to say about politics. In particular, the row over Starmer accepting gifts in the form of football tickets.
Prime Minister Starmer came under scrutiny in the press last week after it emerged he accepted £35,000 of free tickets to games.
Another £8,000-plus is set to be registered for the free use of a hospitality box at Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium.
Defending his decision to accept the free box, Strarmer claimed it would have cost the taxpayer “a fortune” on security if he never accepted the gift. He said: “Now I’m prime minister, the security advice is that I can’t go to the stands. Or if I did, you’d have to do so much to the security and it would cost the taxpayer a fortune as a result”. For Neville, there is absolutely nothing wrong with what Starmer has done.
What does Neville think?
The ex-Manchester United right back doesn’t have the slightest problem with Starmer accepting football freebies.
In fact, the proud Labour supporter and member is “alarmed at the amount of scrutiny” that this is getting.
He told Lewis live at the Labour Conference in Liverpool: “I don't think any normal person would begrudge a family watching a football match together when they've done that all their lives and they're now being told that they have to do it in a certain way.
“He's the prime minister of our country. We know that leaders around the world at this moment in time can be under threat, and we need to make sure that our Prime Minister is safe.”
Neville also points out that Starmer has broken no rules as he has “declared, actually, that he's going to watch Arsenal every week, which everybody knew that he was going to do.”
“I'm not quite sure that the last government will have been declaring everything either”, Neville said.
He added “I'd like our prime minister to be normal. I'd like our prime minister to do the things that we all do in our lives. It's the first time, actually, we've got a prime minister for a long time that I can actually relate to.”
Would the Conservatives have received the same level of scrutiny?
Neville says that the coverage of the gifts row is “certainly a very different approach and treatment to what I think has happened in the last five or 10 years”.
He pointed to “the billions of pounds of contracts that were handed out during covid on VIP lanes without much scrutiny” as an example.
Neville uses the “40 million pound helicopter rides and the private jets that every single conservative minister was getting again without much actual scrutiny” as another.
He added: “What we need to do is go back a little bit and get those billions of pounds back from the previous government's awarding of contracts. Let's concentrate on that, because actually, Keir Starmer is declaring everything.”
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