Starmer’s team used Lord Alli’s £4m Soho townhouse for election strategy meetings! B
Senior aides including Pat McFadden and Sue Gray have used the Labour donor’s properties in election run-up
Sir Keir Starmer’s team used Lord Alli’s Soho townhouse worth £4 million for election strategy meetings, it has emerged.
The Georgian property in central London was used by senior aides and shadow ministers, including Pat McFadden, as well as by Sue Gray, Sir Keir’s chief of staff.
It is the second London property lent by Lord Alli, the figure at the centre of the donations row, for the use of the Prime Minister in the run-up to the election.
The Labour leader also had used Lord Alli’s Covent Garden penthouse, worth £18 million, which he stayed in with his family for a month and a half during the campaign.
Sir Keir said he used the property to let his son study for his GCSE exams “without being disturbed”.
It later emerged that the property was used by the Prime Minister to make a broadcast during the pandemic in which he urged the public to work from home.
The Sunday Times reported that the Soho townhouse, purchased by Lord Alli in 2020, was used for regular election strategy meetings with Mr McFadden, the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and Lord Spencer Livermore, the financial secretary.
Sue Gray also used the property for separate meetings, the nature of which No10 declined to disclose.
The newspaper also reported that the Cabinet Office would not say whether Simon Case, the Cabinet Secretary, had been present for meetings at either of the luxury properties.
The Soho property is the latest in Lord Alli’s portfolio to come under the spotlight for its use by Labour figures.
Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister, stayed at his $2.5 million Manhattan apartment during a holiday in New York over the New Year last year. She was joined by former MP Sam Tarry for parts of the stay, but he was not named in the register of interests entry.
Ms Rayner told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg of the decision: “I get that people are frustrated, in particular the circumstances that we’re in, but donations for gifts and hospitality and monetary donations have been a feature of our politics for a very long time.
“People can look it up and see what people have had donations for, and the transparency is really important.”
The latest revelation comes after Rosie Duffield, a backbench MP, quit the Labour Party accusing the Prime Minister of presiding over “sleaze, nepotism and apparent avarice” that is “off the scale”.
She said that he was unfit for office after “inexplicably” choosing to accept designer suits from Lord Alli, while at the same time pursuing “cruel and unnecessary” policies, such as the two-child benefit cap and the scrapping of winter fuel payments.
There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing by Lord Alli.
