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.

@RedHotChilliPreppers "20K on accommodation, glasses….these are the things we know about."
All properly declared.

If you are going to accept freebies, why do they have to be personal? Why can’t it be a nice painting always to be hung at no.10, or 100 iPads for the most deprived school in the country?

He must be extremely stupid to accept new glasses from a Tory donor. It’s a very intimate thing. He’s a millionaire, why can’t he buy his own?

I don’t care whether they are declared or not. My issue is him screwing over pensioners and telling us it’s all doom and gloom and we are all going to have to pay more into the pot to sort it out.

Not him though. He and his wife are getting free accommodation, free glasses and free designer clothes. He’s paid no VAT on them. He got them for free.

I'm a public sector worker and I'm not even allowed to accept a cup of tea as it might be seen as hospitality.

We can only accept something that can be shared with the whole team for eg a box of chocolates.
Everything, EVERYTHING, needs to be declared.
This disgusts me - how on earth can it be acceptable for anyone working in the public sector to accept clothes/personal items.

Sorry should have said, if something is accepted it has to be declared and relinquished - not kept because it has been declared.
Then raffled off.

You think Keir Starmer is a socialist? 🧐

The sooner we realise that politicians do this as a job, for money and power and not to help others, the sooner we will realise that they will always accept money for goods and services when offered, just look at how rich all ex. PMs, regardless of party have become! Local, national, politicians are all the same and long gone are the days when their role was to help others, although I am sure there are exceptions to the rule, I am yet to meet one! Am I jaded, yep, seen too much working in the sector I am currently employed in and really can't see improvements any time soon.

1 rule for him and another rule for the general public. To accept ££ worth of hospitality on Taylor Swift and Coldplay tickets is not necessary when you’re prime minister. It’s an indulgence. An indulgence more unnecessary than heating your home in winter. Likewise do both him and his wife not have a job? To buy their own clothes? Totally fine if V.Starmer wants to swan around wearing designer labels.. but her or her husband should pay for them. As does everyone else in the country.. or they are hit with the full force of the law.. with theft being the number 1 reason for women being incarcerated in prison. Starmer seems to bend the rule of law when it applies to him. A lot of people don’t realise that law is open to interpretation and we, the people, could probably build a reasonable case against him to hold these moonlighting grifters to account. It’s behaviour like Megan and Harry, terrible. I would expect more from a supposedly upright legal man.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/sep/18/keir-starmer-100000-in-tickets-and-gifts-more-than-any-other-recent-party-leader

The optics are terrible, as the public are being primed for a harsh budget all the news of freebies is galling.

So, KS is going to be different. The UK is sick of performative politics he said. Pensioners are going to have to turn their heating off this winter (by the way we are predicting a big flu epidemic this winter) and children with SEN will have to move from their paid school and wait ages for councils to process their applications for support in state schools.

We are all in it together, things will get worse before they get better he said. There are tough decisions to be made.

Meanwhile Lord and Lady Starmer are today modelling £2,500 spectacles, and a lovely Chanel number. Later they’ll be picking up their free tickets to a concert with hospitality and staying in free accommodation.

I give him 6 months before the Labour Party turn on him.

You wish

The Labour party cult will be out in force any minute with their usual
….. it’s not as bad as the Tories (erm …..he’s just topped the list); it’s the right wing press that’s against Labour (it’s in the guardian) so it will have to be something to do with the a ‘mess’ Tories left. Not mentioned in the ‘right wing’ BBC - quelle suprise.

The problem with Labour Party supporters is they are utterly incapable of holding their party to account so there will be a list of excuses ….or they will ignore, pretend it hadn’t happened because nothing is as bad as the Tories … even when it is

To be honest, I don't actually have a problem with this. We're expecting Victoria Starmer to be beside her husband, looking a million dollars at a constant revolving door of events and state functions, and as a country we give her absolutely no budget to do so. If she found some old dress in the back of her wardrobe that she wore for every one of these events there would be snarky comments in the media and on sites such as MN that she was letting the side down. And if it was suggested that she be given a budget from the public purse to pay for this there would be uproar as well. She also diligently picks from UK based fashion designers, which gives these UK businesses a huge platform on the UK and world stage. Yes, it's sexist and old fashioned that we expect our PM's spouse to look amazing, but there's absolutely no doubt it is expected of her. And at the end of the day its clothes, not an envelope stuffed with £50 notes.

I think whataboutery is usually a shit argument and deflection but I will say that when Johnson got a load of Daylesford Organic sent after he came out of intensive care, I was ok with it. Wallpaper should be capped, price wise. Carrie rented dresses at her own expense. Johnson got a stellar holiday.

Dresses for Victoria Starmer - ok. I mean, within the rules, not great optics but optics aren’t rules, I sort of don’t care. And yet over £2k on glasses has pissed me off. No reason to. It’s within the rules. But for fuck’s sake. My glasses are £300 and I have two pairs. Why can’t he buy his own glasses. What are they made of?

BUT. Not against the rules. I’m annoyed though.

On the flip side, whereas it cost loads to buy access to previous PM's even I might be able to scrape together a couple of grand to get to buy a few favours from Sir Kier. Truly a PM for us normal people.

Agree with you !

It's the hypocrisy that bugs me, both within the Labour Party itself and from its supporters, who seemingly can't see how they are accepting policies and behaviour they would never, ever accept from Conservatives.
And yet when they is pointed out, we are told we are bitter because the Tories lost and Labour are not as bad as the Tories, as if that is justification for double standards.
Still pleased 'the grown-ups are in charge', still convinced Keir is the second coming and won't put a foot wrong?
I note that Jas Athwal hasn't resigned. Do we think Angela Rayner would have let that pass if he had been a Tory?
I also note that the penny seems to have dropped with professional worrier Yvette Cooper that stopping the boats is not as easy as she seemed to think it would be. The highest number this year crossed this week - do we think YC would have stayed quiet about that if the Tories were still in charge?
KS produced a report when in opposition about the dangers of cutting the WFA, which evidently evaporated when the cuts were Labour ones.
Yet apparently all this is OK because it's Labour and they CARE.

Every Labour cabinet member is older than today than when they came to power. Memory fades as one gets older......

He’s on record as saying he will keep accepting them. So I don’t think reading the room is his strong point. Arrogance and entitlement on the other hand…

And yet every other PM and their spouse has managed without accepting ‘donations’. Including those that weren’t that well off, relatively, when they came into power. The Blairs, the Browns, Majors, the Mays bought their own clothes. The Camerons and the Johnsons bought or rented their own. Why are the Starmers different? Ok, they are not Sunak rich, or even Cameron rich. But there are up there with the Blairs (when they came into power, not when they left multiples richer…), the Majors, the Mays and the Browns.

Cameron had the tax payer pay for his suits, 100s of 1000s of private dinners at his no10 flat, all paid for by you and i....

Sunaks private helicopter: £8m tax payer funded....

Hestors money to the Tories, remember calling for people to be killed resulted in a jail sentence for some people over the summer but all ok for the Tories to £20m from a man who did similar......

I don't agree with Starmer on this or very much else tbh.... but its pure hypocrisy to attack Starmer but defend Tory PMs.

Oh and Stamers defence on Arsenal tickets is pure comedy.... "but i wouldn't be able to go otherwise..." ummm do what other fans do and buy your own tickets?

Whataboutery is all very well, but I was commenting on the donations for clothing.

And, I continue to make the same point for - if one set's out ones stall as being a government of service, different to ones predecessors then perhaps one ought to actually live up to that!

Perhaps if all MPs and Ministers wore a uniform (supplied at Tax Payers expense) rather like those worn in the days of Chairman Mao's Communist Party it would be easier and remove any issues over gifts.

They could be provided with two outfirts so that they could have one in the wash whilst wearing the other. Made with an 'easy-care' fabric than dries quickly (useful when speech-making in the rain) and non-iron. Probably stretchy polyester would be best as they could be made in 'one-size fits all'.

The outfits should be a different colour for each party.

(The Prime Minster could have a hat so that they are more easily identifiable.)

Fair enough.

Like i said on a pp, Starmer has at best been foolish at worst... greedy.

Where i differ with some pp is that its not corruption.

If it was in any other sector, it would be bribery and corruption. I thought Starmer was going to clean up politics? He could start by holding themselves to account in the same way every other organisation holds it's staff to account

Anti-bribery policy - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

The Bribery Act 2010 - Quick start guide (publishing.service.gov.uk)