Another day, another Labour Party donor caught running his mouth about the money he’s dropped. “I am hoping to have a conversation with the new government to encourage them to change the law”, Vince told a fringe meeting at the Labour conference, referring to the legal requirement for schools to serve meat to kids. Vince, you see, is a vegan warrior – one who wants to bring more of his company’s vegan meals to school kids, and less sausage and mash.
The reason this is awkward news for the Labour Party is that Vince is a donor – to the tune of £5 million. Indeed, he boasted at conference that his company, Devil’s Kitchen, “already supplies vegan food to one in four primary schools”. Decrying the evils of meat and dairy, Vince demanded that “we shouldn’t be forcing these unhealthy products on to our kids”, which most people would think is a bit of an extreme way to talk about a lunchtime yoghurt.
But this is the new reality for Labour. Fringe millionaires with fringe views seem to have bought access to the party in ways that Boris Johnson’s decorators could only have dreamed of. Better still, none of them seem to have any shame about it.
The problem for Keir Starmer is not that business leaders want to use their cash to spend on the party, it’s that he has set himself up as Mr Squeaky Clean. For a man who repeated, ad nauseam, the necessities of doing the job properly, of the importance of conduct and procedure and how by-the-letter he would be when elected, these shenanigans with Taylor Swift tickets, Arsenal boxes and vegan funders looks pretty hypocritical.
What rankles isn’t the handouts, but the arrogance in which Labour politicians seem affronted when quizzed about it. It’s not that we care that Bridget Phillipson took her kids to see the queen of pop on a freebie, it’s that she blamed her children for her decision.
Just take the ongoing row over Lord Alli’s influence in Labour decision making. For those living under a rock, Alli is the Labour peer who bought Starmer’s wife a new wardrobe, put Angela Rayner up in New York with two grand’s worth of spends and forked out for Phillipson’s work-related 40th birthday celebrations – all for nothing “in return”, he assures us. Except, we now know that Alli’s influence isn’t just on Labour’s fashion sense.
Not only was he given a security pass to number ten – granting him access to the prime minister that the staff of lowly elected politicians don’t have – but we also know that a member of his staff was seconded and put in charge of selecting Labour MPs for this year’s General Election.
“But what about the Tories?” The Labour lackeys cry. Indeed, if you believed the moralising from Starmer and his merry band of managerial elite, you’d think the days of backroom deals and money-for-motions was behind us. But what the former and present governments both have in common is a black hole where their ideas should be. Neither have a vision for society – a plan for where they want us to go.
As such, Starmer seems just as happy as Johnson was to be swayed by the last person to whisper in his ear and drop a new pair of glasses in his pocket. Why else would Vince feel confident enough to boast on a public stage his ability to potentially change the diets of the nation’s children – something the vast majority of the country’s voters would oppose?
The real problem isn’t money men throwing their weight around, it’s the ease with which Starmer seems to have filled his government with people who hold political power despite being unelected. When asked at conference about the reasons why Sue Gray was allegedly paid more than the prime minister, Labour MP Emily Thornberry scoffed that she thought it was wonderful that Starmer, a bloke, was paying a woman member of staff more than him.
Oh please – we’re not that stupid. The problem is not Gray’s pay, or her sex, but the political power she holds over elected members of government and her ability to decide what action MPs can take. In her defence, it’s hard to listen to those pesky constituents with their annoying concerns when you’ve got a job to do making sure your family members are elected to parliament.
Even Starmer’s appointees – James TImpson, Sir Patrick Vallance, Richard Hermer KC – though interesting, were, again, not tested at the ballot box. “But he’s a Labour peer”, cry Lord Alli’s defenders, arguing that there’s nothing to see here because his rosette is the right colour, forgetting that peers of the realm are, you guessed it, unelected by the people who should be in control of political power.
It’s not Vince’s plans to replace our children’s bacon with beansprouts that stinks, it’s the contempt with which this government seems to treat democracy. And from shrinking pints to shutting pubs, banning smoking to repeating Thatcher’s milk snatching ways in the name of the environment, they seem to be hellbent on doing it in the most joyless way possible.
Big-spending party donors appear to be calling the shots, with yet more unpopular policies heading our way
Another day, another Labour Party donor caught running his mouth about the money he’s dropped. “I am hoping to have a conversation with the new government to encourage them to change the law”, Vince told a fringe meeting at the Labour conference, referring to the legal requirement for schools to serve meat to kids. Vince, you see, is a vegan warrior – one who wants to bring more of his company’s vegan meals to school kids, and less sausage and mash.
The reason this is awkward news for the Labour Party is that Vince is a donor – to the tune of £5 million. Indeed, he boasted at conference that his company, Devil’s Kitchen, “already supplies vegan food to one in four primary schools”. Decrying the evils of meat and dairy, Vince demanded that “we shouldn’t be forcing these unhealthy products on to our kids”, which most people would think is a bit of an extreme way to talk about a lunchtime yoghurt.
But this is the new reality for Labour. Fringe millionaires with fringe views seem to have bought access to the party in ways that Boris Johnson’s decorators could only have dreamed of. Better still, none of them seem to have any shame about it.
The problem for Keir Starmer is not that business leaders want to use their cash to spend on the party, it’s that he has set himself up as Mr Squeaky Clean. For a man who repeated, ad nauseam, the necessities of doing the job properly, of the importance of conduct and procedure and how by-the-letter he would be when elected, these shenanigans with Taylor Swift tickets, Arsenal boxes and vegan funders looks pretty hypocritical.
What rankles isn’t the handouts, but the arrogance in which Labour politicians seem affronted when quizzed about it. It’s not that we care that Bridget Phillipson took her kids to see the queen of pop on a freebie, it’s that she blamed her children for her decision.
Just take the ongoing row over Lord Alli’s influence in Labour decision making. For those living under a rock, Alli is the Labour peer who bought Starmer’s wife a new wardrobe, put Angela Rayner up in New York with two grand’s worth of spends and forked out for Phillipson’s work-related 40th birthday celebrations – all for nothing “in return”, he assures us. Except, we now know that Alli’s influence isn’t just on Labour’s fashion sense.
Not only was he given a security pass to number ten – granting him access to the prime minister that the staff of lowly elected politicians don’t have – but we also know that a member of his staff was seconded and put in charge of selecting Labour MPs for this year’s General Election.
“But what about the Tories?” The Labour lackeys cry. Indeed, if you believed the moralising from Starmer and his merry band of managerial elite, you’d think the days of backroom deals and money-for-motions was behind us. But what the former and present governments both have in common is a black hole where their ideas should be. Neither have a vision for society – a plan for where they want us to go.
As such, Starmer seems just as happy as Johnson was to be swayed by the last person to whisper in his ear and drop a new pair of glasses in his pocket. Why else would Vince feel confident enough to boast on a public stage his ability to potentially change the diets of the nation’s children – something the vast majority of the country’s voters would oppose?
The real problem isn’t money men throwing their weight around, it’s the ease with which Starmer seems to have filled his government with people who hold political power despite being unelected. When asked at conference about the reasons why Sue Gray was allegedly paid more than the prime minister, Labour MP Emily Thornberry scoffed that she thought it was wonderful that Starmer, a bloke, was paying a woman member of staff more than him.
Oh please – we’re not that stupid. The problem is not Gray’s pay, or her sex, but the political power she holds over elected members of government and her ability to decide what action MPs can take. In her defence, it’s hard to listen to those pesky constituents with their annoying concerns when you’ve got a job to do making sure your family members are elected to parliament.
Even Starmer’s appointees – James TImpson, Sir Patrick Vallance, Richard Hermer KC – though interesting, were, again, not tested at the ballot box. “But he’s a Labour peer”, cry Lord Alli’s defenders, arguing that there’s nothing to see here because his rosette is the right colour, forgetting that peers of the realm are, you guessed it, unelected by the people who should be in control of political power.
It’s not Vince’s plans to replace our children’s bacon with beansprouts that stinks, it’s the contempt with which this government seems to treat democracy. And from shrinking pints to shutting pubs, banning smoking to repeating Thatcher’s milk snatching ways in the name of the environment, they seem to be hellbent on doing it in the most joyless way possible.