AIBU to think Starmer shouldn’t be accepting freebies?se

[RedHotChilliPreppers]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8djply3z18o

Kier Starmer is in the news today because he has been accepting, and not properly declaring free things he has been given. This time it is clothing, a personal shopper, and alterations for his wife before and after the election.

Why on earth is it OK for our PM to accept freebies like this? Surely as PM he and his wife can buy nice clothes, to look the part, and claim it back as expenses, or get a clothing allowance? Why accept gifts like this off a Labour donor?

As a donor, what would you want to gain by donating money to a party and by showering his wife with nice clothes?

Why can’t Keir buy his own glasses, and say they are an essential expense for his job? Why does a donor need to buy them for him?

I just think this man is quite the hypocrite. He’s meant to be a socialist, and he has a strong ideology he is trying to enforce, but back home his dining room table looks like he’s just got married and it’s covered with gifts.

So, if you are middle income and you want to send your SEN DC to a private school, it’s a luxury and you should pay 20% tax, or if you are a pensioner, you don’t deserve to keep warm, but it’s ok for Starmer to accept FREE luxuries (clothes, glasses, football tickets, 20k worth of accomodation) and not pay tax on them. The tax he will have to pay, is when the person who bunged him those favours, comes knocking for what they want in return.

I say KS should be made to pay 20% tax on all the luxuries he has received in the last 2 years.

Hate to burst your bubble but all prime ministers have done it! Not just him.

I know they did. However they weren’t socialists. You can’t take things away from people because you deem they have too much, or they are living in luxury, then accept loads of free stuff for yourself and your wife.

Keir.

Starmer isn't a socialist!

Labour isn't socialist, it's pretty centric these days. So long as things are declared they can be accepted.

What is he taking away?

Remarkably normal in this role.

All animals are born equal, some are more equal than others.

Yes all PMs have accepted gifts, it's more that he is less than 6 months in office and is already breaking the rules, particularly when he has been very vocal about such things when he was in opposition hadn't yet been caught

He's no more the hypocrite than any other politician. That said, none of them should be allowed anything beyond the traditional bottle at Christmas.

The rest of us aren't, why should they.

Totally agree. He's fairly wealthy and it's tasteless to accept freebies like this while telling everyone else to cut their cloth

I'm not very keen on this culture of politicians accepting gifts, but if you want Starmer to pay tax on it, are you also keen to retrospectively tax all of the other former PMs who have done the same? I bet Boris would owe millions!

Starmer's politics really aren't relevant here, so the question of whether or not he is a socialist doesn't matter. Conduct in public life should be based on a shared consensus of what we as a nation consider to be acceptable behaviour, rather than on individual morals.

Shock horror yet another slippery self serving power hungry lying politician.

They all have loads of freebie's like this though it's strange he didn't know he had to declare his wife's stuff, because it's not mine it doesn't count, is that his excuse. Normal people can't do stuff like that with benefits and just say, oh I didn't realise

It should be this simple. Accept something and declare it whatever it is or ban any gifts/loans/freebies of anything whilst in Govt or opposition. No ifs/buts/ grey areas. No promises of jobs after Government etc. No free parking at airports etc

None of our PMs (or MPs) should be for sale. But seems impossible to push the tide back at this point as it’s just so accepted by them all, they won’t legislate to stop it.

Of course he does. Just another slimy politician.

Accepting freebies isn't the problem, not declaring them within timeframe is. He has form for not declaring within the time frame too from 2022.

Well Boris was a million times worse for taking freebies.

I feel very let down by Starmer and his party. At least we knew the Tories were a bunch of self-serving, hypocritical liars. The disappointment that these are just the same hits harder somehow because I expected more from them.

I thought that Labour would be better than the Tories in this area. Doesn't sound like it. Disappointing.

They all have snouts in the trough, I don't know why people thought this one would be any different. The thing he has done wrong is not declaring it though.

Yet as a doctor i cant accept any gifts from patients that have a significant value....

And they've made it massively difficult to allow reps to provide meals or sponsorship or even stationary for things like conferences or teaching events.

I used to laugh when my dad would say that all politicians are dirty. Now I think he was right all along.

This is how I feel. Of course they'll get freebies, however much it appears they don't need them. But if you accept them, you must declare them as per the rules you've signed up to in that job.

I have to declare any gift over £50, and am well aware of this, I'm not sure how he's managed to fail to declare, frankly.

Not acceptable but all parties are at it and have been for a long time. The rules must change. The conflict of interest policy at my last job meant that staff could accept nothing of greater value than a biro. And it was enforced too. Something like that is needed so the electorate have the confidence that MPs are not being bought.

KS does describe himself as a socialist, he did so earlier this year before the GE. I rather liked that he did so!

Some levels of accepting 'gifts' feels okay to me, if they are items that are pretty much essential for the role, but that our system doesn't have a way of covering, as I wouldn't want anyone without sufficient private wealth to be excluded from public life. So a holiday somewhere that has the level of privacy that might not be affordable - that feels justifiable, and yet, nothing is ever really free and donors usually want something back.

However, I don't think clothes and glasses should come under this, and not declaring them is completely acceptable.