Keir Starmer and top Labour colleagues to stop taking clothes gifts from donors
Labour’s first party conference as a new government risks being overshadowed by the donations row as Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves and Angela Rayner gave in to pressure to stop accepting clothes as free gifts.The decision followed days of criticism over the Labour peer Waheed Alli funding Starmer’s work wardrobe, as well as clothes for his wife, Victoria, that were not initially declared.The Guardian revealed on Friday that Reeves and Rayner also received donations for work outfits.Lord Alli, a businessman who is Labour’s main fundraiser, had given Starmer £2,435 worth of glasses and £16,200 worth of work clothing, as well as a stay in an £18m penthouse apartment.Starmer may have broken parliamentary rules by failing to declare clothes bought for his wife by Alli within 28 days of receiving them.
Rayner, the deputy prime minister, was given a donation for work clothing from Alli in June.This was declared as a donation in kind from the peer worth £3,550, without explaining it was for outfits.The deputy prime minister is understood to have contacted the registrar of interests to give a fuller description of the donation.Reeves has accepted a donation of £7,500 from a donor, Juliet Rosenfeld, since the beginning of last year, which was used to pay for clothing.Reeves declared it as a cash donation rather than as a gift and has been assured this was within the rules.
The prime minister, Rayner and Reeves are all understood to have decided they will not take donations to pay for clothes in future,The row over donations has dogged Starmer, who had pledged to run a government of high standards,While he has insisted he has broken no rules, the saga has threatened to derail the start of the Labour conference in Liverpool this weekend,No 10 has also been destabilised by a row over Starmer’s chief of staff, Sue Gray, after it emerged she was given a pay rise that meant she is earning £170,000 a year – marginally more than the prime minister,Other new Labour staff more junior than Gray have taken pay cuts compared with their old jobs.
After a difficult week, Starmer will not do the traditional conference round of interviews with broadcasters on Sunday morning and instead make his main appearance at his speech on Tuesday.No 10 sources said this had always been the plan given he appeared on the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg programme a couple of weeks ago.Amid frequent warnings from ministers that this autumn’s budget will be painful because of the parlous state of the country’s finances, and the row over cutting the winter fuel allowance to most pensioners, Starmer’s poll ratings have plunged since the general election.However, speaking to the Guardian, Rayner insisted Starmer’s popularity sould bounce back as the government delivered material improvements to people’s lives over the next five years.In her first interview since Labour’s landslide election victory, Rayner said the prime minister had been underestimated before.
“I think he’ll be remembered as somebody who fixed the foundations,” she said,“Public service is not about being popular, it’s about being responsible more than anything,That’s more important,”The prime minister has taken a defiant line in insisting he had complied with all rules over the declaration of more than £100,000 worth of free tickets, mostly to football matches and concerts, and gifts from Alli,Overall, Starmer accepted more than any other MP in the last parliament, and any other major party leader.
The row led to several Labour figures suggesting Starmer’s behaviour was harming his reputation for putting public service first.Sign up to First EditionOur morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it mattersafter newsletter promotionJohn McDonnell, a former Labour shadow chancellor, said on Friday that early Labour leaders would have been surprised to see Starmer being “expensively clothed by rich sponsors”.McDonnell, who had the whip suspended for refusing to vote to cut the winter fuel payment, said that when Keir Hardie was elected as the first Labour MP, he went to parliament in his working man’s tweed suit.He said Hardie was not “expensively clothed by rich sponsors because as a matter of principle he refused to ape the Tories and Liberals in their expensive frock coats and silk top hats”.“The early leaders of the Labour party must be spinning in their graves at the behaviour of some holding positions in the leading echelons of the Labour party today,” McDonnell added.
Writing for the Guardian, McDonnell also hit out at the “poor political judgment and the failure to control the self-serving arrogance of the heavies that now control much of the party machine, including the leader’s office”,McDonnell, who served under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, said previous Labour leaders would have turned their minds to implementing socialist policies rather than bickering over their own pay,Harriet Harman, a former interim Labour leader, suggested Starmer should admit that accepting the freebies was a mistake instead of trying to justify it,The Labour veteran told a Sky News podcast: “You can either double down on it and try and justify it or you can just say: ‘It was probably a misstep, if I had my time again I wouldn’t do it and therefore I’m going to auction for charity or something’,”Diane Abbott, the former shadow home secretary who had the Labour whip returned earlier this year, said on Friday: “I don’t always agree with Harriet Harman but she is right on this.
”Meanwhile, Stephen Flynn, the Scottish National party’s Westminster leader, said Starmer had shown “shockingly bad judgment”.The prime minister has been facing questions over the potential conflict of interest created by accepting so many free tickets from Premier League clubs when the industry is lobbying against his plans for a football regulator.One person involved in the formation of the regulator said there had been a huge amount of attempted lobbying by football clubs towards politicians and officials as they sought to water down the regulation.
Labour’s tax red lines have left Reeves with ‘one hand tied’ for budget, says IFS
Rachel Reeves has “one hand tied behind her back” as she considers how to balance the books next month in her first budget, a leading economic thinktank has said, after she ruled out increases to the four main taxes that account for 75% of all revenues.The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said Labour had promised not to raise income tax, national insurance, VAT or corporation tax before the budget, heightening speculation that Reeves will seek to increase revenues from rises in capital gains tax, inheritance tax and stamp duty on property sales.The IFS said there was a danger the chancellor would seek extra revenues from “economically damaging” tax rises that only bring short-term relief to the government’s spending deficit.The IFS said Labour entered office faced with “unenviable arithmetic” given that the previous government had pushed tax revenues to the highest level since the 1940s, while also imposing “big cuts to public investment and some public services”.“Merely avoiding spending cuts would – if debt is to fall – likely require raising tens of billions of additional revenue by 2028-29,” the report said
Rupert Murdoch’s REA group ups offer for Rightmove to £5.9bn
The Rupert Murdoch-controlled Australian property group REA has upped its proposed offer for Rightmove, the UK’s biggest online property portal, to £5.9bn.REA, in which Murdoch’s News Corporation has a 61% stake, has sweetened its initial proposal by about £300m after Rightmove’s board last week unanimously rejected the first offer as “fundamentally undervaluing” the company.The initial cash and stock offer, which valued the business at 705p a share – giving Rightmove shareholders 18.6% of the enlarged REA group post-deal, has now been upped to about 750p
Labelling Trump’s lies as ‘disputed’ on X makes supporters believe them more, study finds
Labelling tweets featuring false claims about election fraud as “disputed” does little to nothing to change Trump voters’ pre-existing beliefs, and it may make them more likely to believe the lies, according to a new study.The study, authored by John Blanchard, an assistant professor from the University of Minnesota, Duluth, and Catherine Norris, an associate professor from Swarthmore College, looked at data from a sampling of 1,072 Americans surveyed in December of 2020. The researchers published a peer-reviewed paper on their findings this month in the Harvard Kennedy School’s Misinformation Review.“These ‘disputed’ tags are meant to alert a reader to false/misinformation, so it’s shocking to find that they may have the opposite effect,” Norris said.Participants were shown four tweets from Donald Trump that made false claims about election fraud and told to rank them from one to seven based on their truthfulness
Social media and online video firms are conducting ‘vast surveillance’ on users, FTC finds
Social media and online video companies are collecting huge troves of your personal information on and off their websites or apps and sharing it with a wide range of third-party entities, a new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) staff report on nine tech companies confirms.The FTC report published on Thursday looked at the data-gathering practices of Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, Discord, Reddit, Amazon, Snap, TikTok and Twitter/X between January 2019 and 31 December 2020. The majority of the companies’ business models incentivized tracking how people engaged with their platforms, collecting their personal data and using it to determine what content and ads users see on their feeds, the report states.The FTC’s findings validate years of reporting on the depth and breadth of these companies’ tracking practices and call out the tech firms for “vast surveillance of users”. The agency is recommending Congress pass federal privacy regulations based on what it has documented
Ben Spencer inspires Bath’s fast start to get revenge over champions Saints
Bath would have preferred to win last season’s Premiership final but maybe now this is destined to be their time. This bonus-point victory over the reigning champions, Northampton, gave an early glimpse of their capabilities and first-half tries from Joe Cokanasiga, Ted Hill and Ben Spencer paved the way for a strong performance that lays down a marker to all their rivals.If it helped that Bath kept 15 players on the field this time, unlike at Twickenham last June, they showed more than enough composure with and without the ball to suggest they will be a tough nut to crack this time around. A near faultless goalkicking display from Finn Russell, who supplied 13 points, was another plus and even an improved second half from Northampton failed to turn the tide.The duel of the two international fly-halves, Russell and Fin Smith, was another fascinating subplot on an opening night which, for the most part, made for an absorbing first-weekend aperitif
Charnley helps clinch playoff spot for Leigh with win against St Helens
Momentum heading into a Super League playoff campaign is certainly not the be all and end all: but the reactions of both these sides at the finish of a thrilling night in Leigh underlined how crucial it could be, as well as the different trajectories the Leopards and St Helens are on as the business end of the year begins.This was a night of huge significance for both. Leigh, who were ninth as recently as July, knew only victory here would ensure they guaranteed a spot in the playoffs. In the end, a 10th win from 12 games cemented fifth and a trip to Salford in the opening round next week.But that only tells half the story of a dramatic and compelling evening
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