Will Keir Starmer ever get anything right?
Having made a complete mess of Labour's reputation for both honesty and integrity within weeks of getting into office as prime minister because of the sheer scale of the freebies he has received, he then tried to bluster it out.
The claim was that he had done nothing wrong and that all the rules had been complied with. But, legal or regulatory compliance has nothing whatsoever to do with the politics of influence, and everyone knows that. None of the justifications claimed by Starmer and his unfortunate spokespeople did, in that case, prevent the stench rising.
Now Starmer has decided to repay £6,000 of those gifts. So, apparently, the Taylor Swift tickets and some dress hire for his wife will now be paid for, after all.
But if that's the case was the judgement to accept them wrong in the first place? We must presume it was.
And was the legalistic defence offered inappropriate, after all? Perhaps someone has realised that was the case.
But what of the remaining £100,000 or more of gifts? Are they still covered by the ‘justified by the rules' defence, or is Sir Keir simply unable to afford to pay for his suits and glasses after all, since he's obviously been living beyond his means, as anyone spending £32,000 on clothes on his salary would be?
Who knows? No explanation is being offered. All we do know is that Starmer has dug another pit and jumped into it, giving anyone with remaining interest in his already discredited premiership yet more reason to despair about his total lack of judgement and utter incompetence.
And when this is the person currently deciding on our response to war in the Middle East, his lack of judgement matters.
And, to add to all this, the internet is awash with rumours that there is much worse to come about Starmer. I have no idea if any of this is true, and so have nothing to say, except to note that once he had exposed himself to both political ridicule and justified criticism on the issue of expenses and the use of second properties, then some in the media were bound to go looking for more, whether there is anything to find or not. What this is, then, is an indication of a loss of faith.
People, quite reasonably, lost faith in Boris Johnson. He ended up being forced out of his premiership, party and parliament. Few would doubt that was appropriate.
We are not there yet with Starmer. It does, however, seem that with every move that he makes we get ever closer to this situation arising. I cannot see how, on current form, he can survive in office for five years. It might be considerably less.
The trouble is that so effective has his operation to shut down opinion that is associated with talent, flair and ability in Labour been that there is no-one left to succeed him. What a total mess we have in that case when we also have no hint of a functioning opposition at present in this country.
There is only one upside to all this. Might this be the moment when people realise that the two-party system and first-past-the-post finally failed them? I can hope so, but that is the only comfort there might just be to be found in this debacle.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
There are links to this blog's glossary in the above post that explain technical terms used in it. Follow them for more explanations.
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
Agreed.
I was looking at that picture of Stymied and his wife at some stadium or other.
It was his wife that got me – she had ‘We’ve made it’ written all over her face.
I don’t know…………………
Thank you and well said, Richard.
Starmer’s domestic arrangements are his business, butStarmer has questions to answer about his time as as DPP and some of the files that are not supposed to have reached his desk and the decisions taken on files that did. Plus his micro management and, even then, expenses.
It was interesting that when Johnson asked questions about Starmer’s response to Savile the issue was quickly shut down, but Johnson’s questions were legitimate.
Was Starmer receiving “freebies” as director of Public Prosecutions? People are now wondering. His political opponents will now be leaving no stone unturned. Not the brightest of politicians that’s for sure!
Thank you.
No freebies as far as I know, but rather liberal with the expenses.
I understand that one of the very first things he did was shut down a very successful unit that was taking cases to the crown court and outsourced the work to private barristers – thereby stopping a training / development opportunity for staff, reducing the effectiveness of prosecutions and increasing the cost. If only we could hope that he learnt any of the right lessons from this. Sadly from the comments he has made thus far even more expensive outsourcing seems likely to happen.
A picture can paint a thousand words Colonel.
A beaming PM and his wife in donated clothes/glasses at a concert they got for free maybe who belongs to a party sticking to Tory cuts in a country blighted by BREXIT and austerity?
The picture signifies continuity, and chez Starmer’s arrival at the top of it.
Domestic or not there is nothing innocent about any of this Colonel in my opinion at least.
In another time, a picture like this would not be released. Now, it’s lack of self-awareness shows that they just don’t care.
Thank you, PSR.
I don’t disagree.
Today program this morning contacted six Labour MPs to comment on Starmer’s ‘Stand by Israel’ position. None would come on the program as, they told the BBC, it would cost them their job.
I checked all the nouns today!
The fact that they can refuse to speak tells us something repellent about this whole system. No MP should be allowed to decline being held to account or asked to explain themselves. This is a repulsive form of self-serving cowardice on their part. If they can’t speak in favour of their own party in government, they should compel it to change or resign from it, perhaps force a by-election, and stand as an independent.
What worries me most is what this all says about Starmer’s relationship with his advisors. Either the team around the PM is so eye-wateringly incompetent that it can’t see the pitfalls into which Starmer is unerringly tripping, or Starmer is simply not taking advice from his team (either not seeking it, or ignoring it once given). Every one of these options implies that Starmer could not run a small company, let alone manage the whole UK.
The name Truss springs unbidden to my mind as I am just reading Anthony Seldon’s book.
@BBC and othre media are quite content to keep this all about integrity and judgement of indivual politicans.
They are all steering well clear of the system that the debate ‘points to but doesnt see’ – namely that the whole system is run on corrupt money from special interests – gambling private health care , fossil fuel etc – Labour got £19m from these sources.
No one wants this system to be questioned, and talking about the odd ten thousand here or there to a disredited Starmer provides convenient cover.
Maybe we could try this approach?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0e1z00vvjlo
No matter how he “dresses” it up, Starmer is making a “spectacle” of himself, in “concert” with his colleagues, although they are no “match” for the Tories, who are in a “league” of their own. (Sorry)
How can any politician not see that accepting gifts for yourself or a partner/spouse looks really bad. They get paid more than the rest of us, and that is fair enough, but to take gifts as well, at the same time saying ‘we don’t have any money’ is beyond comprehension.
Going to have to dissent here. Not from the accusations of political naivety. Starmer is bang to rights there.
I wouldn’t give any credence to internet rumours that there is worse to come. That will likely come from excitable rightwingers who can’t believe their luck that they have a scandal to grab on to so early in Labour’s administration. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if there is nothing more to add to this other than whatever decisions Starmer now makes on stuff already in the public domain. And we are nowhere near Johnson levels of corruption.
I also don’t think this impacts Starmer’s abiity to respond to foreign crises or domestic ones.
I do think the bigger issues are the massive underperformance of the economy and the fact all Labour’s chips are now loaded on the budget. The risks being built up there have been increased by Starmer’s and Reeve’s foolish doom-laden rhetoric and the spraying up the wall of nearly all Labour’s political capital over the Winter Fuel Allowance announcement.
I agree with your last para
But I also suspect there is more to come
The stench pre-dates Starmer’s time as leader of the opposition and PM. He lived the high life on expenses as DPP. There are also other matters, often referred to, about his time as DPP.
Now he’s paying back a fraction of the bribes he took. Is that really supposed to appease the UK public? The guy lives off others – he’s a parasite and sponger.
All I feel is anger and disgust.
As for being the poodle of the USA, American healthcare companies, Murdoch, Alli and other very wealthy, influential people and payments from genocidal maniacs, it all marks him out as a very unsavoury character who is surrounded by equally unsavoury characters who should be nowhere near power.
Very slimy indeed.
Thank you and well said, AC.
There seem to be all sorts of suggestions of stories floating around but none seem to have any substance and if they do exist nobody has put them in the public domain.
So I suggest they dont actually exist.
Thank you, John.
I won’t comment about Starmer’s private life, which is subject to some speculation, but, as AC Bruce and I have commented, his time as DPP is legitimate grounds for further scrutiny.
Agree. The stuff I’ve seen – on restricted blogs – is partly personal, and of no interest to me. It’s not the corruption either, some hinted at in his bio. For me it is his total corruption of Labour policy and ideals – the Israel statement is NOT Labour PARTY policy.
I am not interested in personal stuff – buit the media and many people are
The corruption of the prupose of the Labour Party is his major crime for me
“…I am not interested in personal stuff – but the media and many people are….”
It’s always the ‘personal stuff’ that causes the problem. Especially the faintest whiff of sexual impropriety. The Media and public love that.
I have to agree with regard to wrecking the purpose of the Labour Party, but I feel the ground was set out by Kinnock , and Blair (et al) certainly softened the target with a distinct rightwards shift. Is Keir Starmer actually old enough to remember what the Labour Party was for? ….Yeah yeah his father was a toolmaker so like Kemi Badenoch he’s working class(?).
Pah! Tony Benn wasn’t working class but he worked for and (convinced me and others that he) believed in a socialist society.
Poor political judgement is all over this shambles – but it really is both more, and less, than it seems.
The lesser, but still revealing, point is the calamitous poor evaluation of – quite literally – what Starmer looks like in his chosen posh glasses. He has been made to look even more like a nerd/rabbit in the headlights in these frames. The expenditure has not only not improved his appearance, it has actually made a bad case worse. And the important point about that is EITHER nobody noticed or cared to warn him OR they did and he was too dunderheaded to pay attention.
The much bigger issue is the moral position of taking freebies AND removing pensioners’ WFA . That reveals not just political cack-handedness, but a total moral blindness which is indefensible. It could hardly be a clearer warning of rotten decisions still yet to come – and it is those, far more than any, not yet unearthed, past indiscretions, which should worry us all.
Singaporean (ex) cabinet minister just jailed for a year over corruption. Accepting gifts worth about £200,000, I believe.
Not sure we have the jail spaces to accommodate all the UK politicians that meet that threshold.
I have been looking up the Singapore corruption laws. “The Penal Code also contains provisions that deal specifically with the bribery of domestic public officials (sections 161 to 165). Scenarios cited include:
a public servant taking a gratification, other than legal remuneration, in respect of an official act.
a public servant obtaining anything of value, without consideration or with such consideration that the public servant knows to be inadequate, from a person concerned in any proceedings or business conducted by the public servant.”
“There are no specific types of gifts or gratuities which are permitted under the PCA and the Penal Code. Any gift or gratuity is potentially caught by the PCA and Penal Code if accompanied with the requisite corrupt intent, and if the other elements required by the statutes are met.
Domestic public officials are also subject to the Government Instruction Manual, which details the circumstances in which gifts and entertainment can be accepted and when they must be declared. A breach of the Government Instruction Manual may result in disciplinary proceedings being instituted against the said public official. As a matter of practice, public officials are not allowed to accept any gift offered to them on account of their official position or official work. However, a public official may accept a gift if it is impracticable or inappropriate to do so in the circumstances and is required to report the receipt of such a gift to his permanent secretary immediately. Any gift valued at more than S$50 (US$40) can be kept by the public official only if they are donated to a Governmental department or independently valued and purchased from the Government by that public official.” (Norton Rose Fulbright)
We don’t have an Instruction Manuel, or adequate laws. We have slack, waffling politicians talking guff about feeble, pointless rules they made up for their own convenience. All this tells us, is that Britain, in almost every aspect of life, both business and government (except largely imported technology) is living in the Stone Age. I do a rank dis-service to the people of the Stone Age, of course (the Stone Age lasted over 2 million years). Living in Britain, it just feels like 2 million years of abject incompetence.
On the matter of suits, £32,000 for suits (four? six? ten?)? I suddenly thought that the big mistake Jesus Christ made was not having a Saville Row suit. Had he crafted a situation that ensured he possessed the right suit – it always tells you so much – things may have have turned out differently …………..
to the last
I consider him to be… the type of public person who makes me resort to expletives when assessing their worth.
The main stuff seems to be public domain, v high expenses as DPP, inc a chauffeured car, + high costs of his international travel (much more than his predecessor). He gave up the car when it came to public notice. Bit of a trend there.
Thank you.
That and policy decisions. Some high profile cases went nowhere, but the 2011 riots, some legitimate grievances, were handled in a very political manner.
“Might this be the moment when people realise that the two-party system and first-past-the-post finally failed them?”
In a world where facts and evidence mattered, they would; but in our world facts and evidence don’t matter. It only took Starmer to fall flat on his face, and the Conservative Party members (not the sharpest pencils in the set) have been acting at their Conference as if they can win an election;, and the same people that filled the Cabinet Room with incompetence and failure (and were part of a fourteen year disaster), now act as if they have nothing to apologise for. Some of the Failed Four confessed the the Conservatives had failed people, but by the time they had stopped lecturing us about how clever and successful they were, and how successful the Conservative government had been, what it was they were actually apologising for had vanished into thin air without ever being explained. They can only do this if they think voters can be fooled; and the truth is the voters were taken in by Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer; so I think scepticism over the hope that people have learned anything is called for. Even some Scots voted for Starmer, and that takes some believing, that they would actually vote for Labour – again! Meanwhile, Russell Findlay, yet another loud, aggressive, foghorn toned Scottish Conservative leader (with the support of a fast shrinking minority of elderly voters, and a record of backing Liz Truss), is acting as if he has something important to say; and as if anybody is still listening, or cares what he says (and, after the Douglas Ross debacle, that starts with the members of his own party, including the politicians).
Just heard that if an employee received a gift, it would count as a benefit-in-kind (BIK), and be taxable.
Why aren’t MP’s gifts taxable?
I asked this a while ago
And I genuinely do not know
But MPs do have separate tax rules and even tax returns…..
Here’s the rule book from HMRC…
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/self-assessment-mps-and-ministers-sa102mpm1 with links to the special Parliament SA forms.
I can’t find any reference to benefits in kind or gifts in the special MPs notes, nor in their special MP’s “Parliament” pages of the return (unless it comes under “all other benefits” box 8.).
But it will be in the normal income pages of their SA return? (Where are the tax specialists when you need them?)
It may of course be relevant that the suits were declared for IPSA (?) as “Office costs”.
There’s a v large free form text box (box 14) for anything that might be on their conscience – and they are all “honourable” members aren’t they, so I’m sure they declare everything properly, and “all the rules are followed at all ties”.
I have never done an MPs tax and so don’t claim to have the expertise.
But I think it should be a benefit in kind and said so here when it was first announced.
This is all so desperately disappointing. It is the end of hope and change. What empty slogans they are. On July 5th I thought I was breathing in lungfuls of clean Labour air. What a fool.
Government credibility is zero at moment the fastest fall I. History and all of that fall self inflicted. Tbh honest I don’t care about the son using allis house for revision nor about the football you can get into who said what about the level of security; it seems like a family event also that’s been going on a long time and why shouldn’t it be allowed to continue now he’s pm.
But using that flat for his broadcast and putting up domestic photos implying it was his is deception. Hedve been better off doing it at transport house. Not paying for your own clothes and getting your wife free gear Jesus Christ ffs
I’m afraid I’m going to blow my own trumpet – my letter in the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/sep/29/gifts-to-politicians-are-all-about-buying-influence?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Excellent
And a good letter
Thank you, Richard.
“Loss of faith”…exactly. I lost faith in the Labour Party some while ago and resigned my membership, but I did have hopes that after the absolutely awful last 14 years a new Labour Government would reverse the drift to towards the extreme right. As I have commented before, from the elation of seeing the back of that terrible Conservative Government to the despair of the actions of the new Labour Government in a matter of a few short weeks…..
I received a message from a friend yesterday announcing that she had resigned from the Party too after a lifetime’s membership, she is in her 70’s. They will never be re-elected with Starmer and co. in charge but I also fear that the spineless majority of Labour MPs will do nothing about that.
There is a key problem to change here. When, as has been said in this thread, voters are “taken in” by Boris Johnson and now Starmer, who is to blame, the voter or the one who is deliberately misrepresenting themselves? I’d argue the latter, the only other option being to trust nothing that any politician says, for fear of being duped. That said, many people do feel that elected govt ignores their wishes, because in fact it does, but then face no other option than to vote for the least bad candidate, which is scraping the bottom of a foetid barrel in terms of options. For even such a minor change from FPTP to PR, the decision to do this resides with those in power. This is a catch-22. In poll after poll the majority favour PR, but are ignored, and there is no mechanism for making it happen. All voters can do is vote, then the ruling party can do whatever it wants. Sure, voters can protest, sign petitions, write letters, campaign, riot, and so on, but none of those are decision-making powers, only possible influencers of decisions. As a way of organising human life and trying to get things done, this is terrible, and wasteful. The time and resources used by hundreds of thousands of people marching for a cause could be better spent in citizens’ assemblies with direct involvement in decision-making. As an example, the decision to end the WFA affects millions directly, but also their families and friends, yet, just like that, poof, the payment is gone because a few hundred people can stand against millions, since power has been ceded to them and they control a bureaucracy that will simply stop the payments. Were that decision instead made by assemblies organised across the UK, it likely would have been a different one. At the heart of this, for me, is a dangerous folly: for so many to give power away to so few. The folly comes to light when that power makes cruel and/or self-serving decisions, and it becomes obvious that the voter has given away their direct involvement in making decisions. This is dangerous, and the body count of just the last 14 years is staggering, not least in the passivity in response (myself included). People themselves would not make the appalling decisions that elites make for them, they would not decide to impoverish themselves or their loved ones, or deny their loved ones healthcare, social care, education, clean water, green spaces, a liveable planet. Poll after poll on these issues tells us the collective wisdom that sits against elite madness. Even with the power of media to influence people’s perceptions and understanding the overwhelming majority want fully publicly funded and delivered healthcare, and recognise the importance of nationalised natural monopolies. Elites tell us the mob is dangerous, but then they would wouldn’t they. The turn to fascism isn’t the mob, it’s wrought from desperation caused by elite misrule, a point often repeated on this blog, an ideology that itself depends on centralised power.
If voters are being duped, that has to include every commentator on this blog, myself included. The question I would ask is (and I ask myself this), how am I being duped by those in power to believe that they’re essential, that they’re on my side (and that of those I share solidarity with), that they’re protecting me, that this is the best way of doing things. Numerous commentators on this blog have noted the division that politicians sow. Given that, at what point will we discard those divisions and look to something different than elite rule, and cede power not to a tiny number of (predominantly) bad faith actors who keep duping us, and genuinely overcome those sown divisions and trust the decisions of the many? I seriously do not believe that the system that has brought us to where we are can take us elsewhere. Yet I’m stumped as to how to get somewhere else when that would involve building a different system and disempowering the current one. I’m aware that assemblies are being developed by citizens to sit alongside government, currently without much political power – this may shine a light on just how egregious things have become and gradually build something better, and I’d prefer that to civil unrest and certainly to revolution, which likely wouldn’t end well.
In 1976, the UK ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Article 25 of that covenant says that the people should have direct political rights with which to hold their governments to account. These rights include the right to launch referendums and initiatives. Under Switzerland’s system of decentralised direct democracy, political rights are enshrined in the federal and cantonal constitutions. The regions (cantons) control education, the courts, the police, energy, transport. Anything that can be done at a lower level should not be done at a higher one – that’s the subsidiarity principle.
Tellingly, the UK government has NOT implemented ICCPR into UK law. I strongly suspect that’s because the establishment is scared to death of the people actually exercising their power.
Here in Scotland, where the People are sovereign under the Claim of Right 1689, we are pushing the Scottish administration to implement ICCPR into Scots law. This is consistent with the Scotland Act 1998, Schedule 5 (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/46/schedule/5), and is the reason Holyrood was able to implement the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into Scots law – which it did in July. You can read more here: https://wecollect.scot, and here: https://dearscotland.substack.com/p/open-letter-to-scotlands-first-minister?utm_source=publication-search
Until the People have direct political rights, the charade of what is called British democracy will continue.