Victoria Starmer’s dress

[Fe2O3Girl]

It’s this:

Today …

‘Will we get a glimpse of the edgier Queen Vic?’

https://www.thetimes.com/article/d9c9c32d-323f-4264-bafc-114c93339d92?shareToken=8efbd95f8e5de6eff674c59cc884df1f

She didn't even buy this cheap red nylon frilly fest herself. It was a gift from a donor that they failed to declare. 'Good old NHS worker' making her pounds stretch she ain't. She has her paws out with a begging bowl.

It does all feel awfully wrong, doesn’t it?

This has made me so depressed! I have been defending Starmer over the intention of changing the Winter Fuel Allowance, thinking it was wrong so many affluent pensioners got it, but felt they'd got it wrong with the lower income pensioners who just miss out on pension credit.

But this just makes me feel that they have no idea how normal people live. £40K on clothes is unimaginable to the vast majority of people in this country who have less than that as an annual income. I know the Instagram culture has raised the stakes for women in the public eye, but would it really be so terrible if she had just stocked up on a few nice frocks from M&S?

The Spanish Queen wears Zara and other high street Spanish brands reasonably often to public engagements.

So I really don't see why the wife of our prime minister needs to be given expensive clothes in order to "look the part". Especially when they seem to be well off enough as a family to be able to afford to buy her own clothes.

But if you are going to accept clothes from another man, just declare them ffs! The rules really shouldn't have come as a surprise to Sir Keir, who has been a politician for some years now and so should have been well aware of them.

Yes! The Spanish Queen looks amazing in high street and Mrs Starmer has a similar slender build. She would look good in a bin bag. No need to accept bribes

The really stupid part is that they’re not ‘expensive clothes’. It’s impossible to understand why these particular salaried, senior, professional people would need someone else to pay for Me and Em dresses.

True! She wasn’t kitted out in Dior and McQueen though I think she’d look lovely in both.

This is also very true.

Look, if my life partner had just been elected PM and they wanted me to attend official events then I would want some nice clothes and no, with the world media watching me, I wouldn't be looking at M&S or Zara, sorry.

But hell's teeth, I'd pay for them myself or, if I were offered a gift, the first thing I'd do would be to check the rules, especially if my partner were issuing dire warnings about painful budget decisions.

It's so strange, it's the kind of behaviour I normally associate with a government that's been in power for too long and got lazy and careless, not from one that's only just taken office.

Parliament's standards watchdog will not investigate whether Sir Keir Starmer broke rules by not declaring clothes gifted to his wife by Labour donor Lord Waheed Alli, Downing Street has said.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgeyy0dlp24o

theyre turning (or they always were) the Tory version they criticise

Floisme yes, exactly.

My DH would be mortified to let someone else buy clothes and glasses for us!

And I cannot fathom why Keir Starmer and his office didn't already understand the rules. It's not like he is a new MP (and even if he was, that still wouldn't be an excuse).

I mean, every profession pretty much has rules around declaring gifts. My DH has to declare anything he receives from (potential or actual) counterparties, and he has strict rules around the values permitted. When I was in audit I would have had to declare anything from a client over a certain value. Well, in fact I probably wouldn't have been able to accept in the first place. But I damn well knew the rules!

Ridiculous lack of judgement on his part.

Don’t know why anyone is surprised. The Labour Party are showing us that they’ve had their eye on the prize for so long they’ve not bothered to read the rule book. Now they’re in power actually making decisions not just talking it’s at last occurring to them that such decisions have consequences and I think there will be more uncomfortable realities coming. It’s just disappointing it really is but like the black hole in finances that may or may not exist because they won’t let us see, it’s the tip of the iceberg. They aren’t saints after all just people, much like the ones they replaced.

My thoughts exactly.

This aged well!