EUAN MCCOLM: Labour’s shameless troughing will lead voters to a damning verdict… you’re just like the rest of them _ Hieuuk
I’m not one for conspiracy theories, but are we absolutely sure the Labour Party hasn’t been infiltrated by political opponents bent on destroying it from the inside?
Can we say with certainty that lifelong Scottish nationalists haven’t planted themselves in the government’s press office, there to make mischief?
Are we confident Conservative sleeper agents aren’t, even now, moving among cabinet ministers, softly whispering dreadfully bad advice in their ears?
Preposterous stuff, though such a plot would explain why Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and members of his inner circle find themselves bogged down in a donations scandal that, less than three months after the general election, has severely damaged the party’s reputation for seriousness and propriety.
Let us be blunt about Sir Keir’s qualities. He’s not a charismatic man, not the kind of leader who inspires adulation.
The UK Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson accepted freebie tickets for a Taylor Swift concert because ‘it was a hard one to turn down’
Rather, his unique selling point to voters is his dull but business-like approach.
After years during which the Conservative Party at Westminster and the SNP at Holyrood grew distant from – and contemptuous of – voters, Sir Keir’s Labour offered an end to psychodrama and sleaze and a return to something resembling stable government.
Now? Well, the PM’s crown is already battered and tarnished and he has nobody but himself to blame.
Revelations that Labour peer Lord Alli gave a string of lavish gifts – including cash for expensive designer outfits – to Sir Keir, his wife Lady Starmer, Deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, chancellor Rachel Reeves, and others give the very strong impression that those at the very top of government don’t quite understand the frustration of voters who continue to struggle through a seemingly endless cost-of-living crisis.
The Labour Party conference should have been the opportunity for the new Government to show it means business.
Instead, we saw a string of MPs defend their receipt of freebies and others – sometimes tetchily, sometimes wearily – try to change the topic during tense television interviews.
And, boy, those explanations have been quite remarkable.
Take Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson’s defence of her decision to take tickets for a Taylor Swift concert.
‘I’ll be honest,’ she said, ‘it was a hard one to turn down…One of my children was keen to go along. It’s hard to say no if you’re offered tickets in those circumstances.’
Does that reassure you that there’s nothing untoward about snaffling those prized briefs? Because it does nothing for me.
Across the UK, there are parents of children who were keen to go to one of Ms Swift’s quickly sold-out stadium shows.
Those lucky enough to have the financial wherewithal to stump up for tickets joined online queues in the hope of making their kids’ dreams come true.
Very many more, however, simply didn’t bother to try to buy. Tickets to a Taylor Swift show costing hundreds of pounds are a luxury, even for the hardest working families.
Ms Phillipson’s decision to bring one of her children into the matter was distasteful, indeed. She took the tickets and she should own that decision, completely.
But the chatter about designer clothes, holidays in New York, and tickets to pop concerts will soon pass.
What will linger, however, is the sense that this new government is comprised of people who don’t “get it”.
Go back 20 years and the SNP “got it”. What they got was that, after coming to power on a wave of optimism in 1997, Tony Blair’s Labour government had started to look distant from voters.
This complacency from Labour created a fertile breeding ground for nationalists, whose message – “Labour has left you behind” – was clear, direct, and seductive.
The Labour Party has been tarnished by revelations members, including Prime Minister Keir Starmer , enjoyed lavish gifts as they introduced cuts to balance the books
Of course, events eventually caught up with the SNP (the ongoing police investigation into allegations of fraud involving party funds has put the nationalists’ gas at a peep) but, for a long time, first Alex Salmond then Nicola Sturgeon made much of the idea that their party was the natural home for Labour’s traditional supporters.
Things may look bleak for the SNP right now but the party retains the support of many it prised away from Labour in the mid noughties.
Unsurprisingly, there is considerable anger among Scottish Labour politicians about the revelations of government ministers filling their boots.
‘It’s absolutely bloody infuriating,’ one Labour MSP told me.
‘We paid a massive price for people thinking we were out of touch and greedy and we’ve worked damned hard up here to put things right.
‘You’d think members of the cabinet down south might have realised this sort of thing would come back to bite us all. It doesn’t matter that I’ve never taken a big freebie. The mud sticks to me, too.’
It’s difficult to disagree with that. You would have thought, given the tone of politics across the UK in recent years, that sensible, serious politicians would have been constantly alert to issues that might blow up into scandal.
Those caught up in this controversy have been keen to point out that no rules have been broken, that they are perfect entitled to have accepted these gifts and that they have declared them in the appropriate register. This defence is utterly tin-eared.
It doesn’t matter if they’re playing by the letter of the law. What matters is that voters see powerful people on six figure salaries sticking their snouts in the trough.
There is no difference between a Labour MP accepting tickets to a Taylor Swift concert and a Tory toff taking a weekend shooting holiday from a donor.
Both show a lack of understanding of the lives of the people they were elected to represent.
Angela Rayner’s explanation – ‘donations or gifts and hospitality and monetary donations have been a feature of our politics for a very long time’ – is not the get out she thinks.
The reason gifts and hospitality have been a feature of our politics for a very long time is because elected politicians dictate their own rules of employment.
And they also dictate the rules for others in the public sector who would soon find themselves in deep trouble if they were caught accepting thousands of pounds in presents while carrying out their duties.
There is rarely such a thing as a free lunch. Sure, there might be nothing explicitly transactional when a rich businessman gives a politician VIP tickets to a Taylor Swift concert or pays for a holiday.
There may be no discussion of the quid pro quo. But nobody believes that multi-millionaires lavish luxuries on MPs out of the goodness of their hearts.
If we accept – as we must – that the Labour Party has not been infiltrated by enemy agents, then we’re left with only two possible explanations for this self-created scandal.
Either senior government figures don’t care about what voters think or – even worse – are too blockheaded to have thought through the implications of their decisions.
Neither, I’m afraid, does much to inspire confidence in the Prime Minister and his team.
Just weeks into his premiership, Sir Keir Starmer’s reputation as a man of the highest standards is crumbling.
Labour was supposed to bring stability and integrity back to government.
Instead, the PM and his closest colleagues deserve that most damning assessment: They are just like all the rest.
