Is the freebiegate row becoming hypocritical?
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Keir Starmer has tried to shake off criticism for accepting freebies by pointing out the media does it too.
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In brief…
- Keir Starmer is continuing to come under scrutiny for accepting gifts and donations
- The most recent developments were accepting £20,000 in accommodation costs and filming a video in a Labour donor’s flat during the pandemic.
- The News Agents assess the media’s role in keeping the story alive, and question whether there is an element of hypocrisy in doing so.
What’s the story?
The media has not exactly been giving Keir Starmer and the Labour Party an easy ride when it comes to the free gifts and donations they have been accepting.
In the latest development, it was reported that Starmer accepted £20,000 from Labour peer Lord Waheed Alli in accommodation costs to help his son study for his GCSEs.
He has also come under scrutiny for filming a video during the pandemic in the donor’s flat.
It comes after the press erupted over his acceptance of a free box at Arsenal, Taylor Swift tickets, clothes for him and his wife, glasses and more.
Starmer has repeatedly insisted he broke no rules in doing so. So why is the media giving continued coverage?
Is it a justified check and balance on our politicians, or a desperate attempt to find something to talk about when things are flat?
What are the rules?
Any gifts worth more than £300 must be formally registered on the MPs register of interests in a timely manner. When gifts with a value of over £500 are offered, an MP must make sure they have come from a “permissible donor” who is registered in the UK.
On hospitality, the rules state the MPs should not “encourage business contacts to provide hospitality to them, or indirectly to other colleagues, friends or relatives”.
What has Starmer said?
Starmer has defended his actions by pointing to the media hypocrisy of covering the story, given that journalists also “invite us to quite a lot of hospitality events.”
He told one reporter: “Your summer party is a great party, costing thousands of pounds, and you invite me every year.”
Defending the £20,000 in accommodation costs, Starmer has said: “At the beginning of the election, which we didn’t know when it was going to be called, my boy was in the middle of his GCSEs.
“I made him a promise that he’ll be able to get to his school, do his exams without being disturbed.”On accepting clothing donations, Starmer has said that he took the gifts during a "busy election campaign".
"I won't be making declarations in relation to clothing again," he said.He has stressed that it is “very important” to him that rules are followed and that “we have transparency”.
“And that’s why, shortly after the election, my team reached out for advice on what declaration should be made, so it’s in accordance with the rules.”
What’s The News Agents’ take?
Jon asks whether by getting bogged down in “this whole question of MPs taking hospitality, having to make a declaration, have we gone slightly mad?”
While he says there are “times when we're absolutely right to call some of this stuff out”, Jon points out there are some elements of the story which may not seem important at all.
Jon adds: “This equivalence that all politicians have got their noses in the trough and they're all as bad as each other, and they're all a pile of shit, I think is just misplaced.
“I think Starmer having his kid in some flat so that he could get on with his GCSEs without film crews on the doorstep. It seems to me…what's the big deal?”
Lewis says that if you talk to people around the Labour leadership now, they will acknowledge there have definitely been some misjudgments.
“Some of the stuff around the clothes and the glasses, for example, are hard to justify, when you've got a prime minister who is clearly a man of means in all sorts of ways,”
In many ways, Lewis says that what we are seeing now has echoes of the expenses crisis of 2009.
“It feels like it's got a familiar rhythm. Journalists go to the register of interests, they find out what's been happening here, and they start talking about it.
“There's a sort of appetite from parts of the press to recreate some of those dynamics.”
Emily agrees, saying that the expense scandal was about the “absolute visceral disgust, or visceral kneejerk about the use of public money.”
“People have just run out of patience with the idea of their money being used on anything,’ she adds.
But Starmer hasn’t been using public money, The News Agents acknowledge.
So why should this matter?
Somehow, it has “become part of the story that the prime minister is doing things that other people wouldn't do”, Emily says.
“He is getting paid by the public purse, therefore we think we can demand a certain level of behaviour from him.”
The big question though, Emily says, is “whether the gifting means that you are influencing something.”
However, it is not only politicians who receive hospitality.
Indeed, journalists too are invited to events - get free tickets - and it could be argued that they too are influenced by freebies.
Lewis says: “If we as journalists feel that we can be given hospitality or whatever it happens to be, but still feel unencumbered in terms of our reporting, then the same logic must also apply to politicians.
“It's about your behavior, and I don't think that is coming across in some of the coverage at the moment.”
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