The working people, the phrase Starmer and Reeves always use, do not have friends who would give them such gifts. By accepting these gifts Starmer, Raynor and Reeves put themselves on a pedestal high above the working people and in a very different class … writes Mihir Bose
It was not meant to be like this. Keir Starmer had won office promising change, and we were told that the changes would be so welcome we would feel we are living in a new country which was infinitely better than the grubby one left behind by fourteen years of Tory rule. Yet three months into his government many now feel that the change Starmer talks about is not change for the better but either no change or something much worse. We are not quite at the stage where we are saying Come Back Rishi, all is forgiven but we do not feel like saying how wonderful Keir is.
When we should excitingly be discussing how the country can improve and how we can get growth going which will mean more money in our pockets we are wondering about the wonderful presents Starmer, and his wife have had. It makes you feel that the Starmers are enjoying their own private Christmas long before Santa has even got up to get his sledges ready.
So how did we get to this state? For a start we live in an age where we expect our politicians to be more open about their lives and also expect them to maintain standards in public life that their predecessors never did. Take gifts. A few days ago, I met a very distinguished former politician of this country at a party. I mentioned to him how in the past I had never worried about the clothes the Prime Minister was wearing or where he got his glasses from. He smiled and said well Churchill got presents and so did Disraeli. Indeed, they did and Lloyd George, one of this country’s greatest prime ministers, was corrupt. What is more his predecessor Herbert Asquith, just as the first world war was starting, had an affair with Venetia Stanley, a pretty young woman. He made love to her on the back seat of a sedan while being driven round London, showing her secret, highly confidential, documents which he then tossed out of the car leading to an inquiry as to how these secret papers were being found on the London streets. We know about all this from Robert Harris’s new novel Precipice.
Harris, an excellent journalist, bases his novels on historical events. In what I consider his best novel, The Fatherland, he gave a very interesting twist to history, imagining what might have happened had the Nazis won the war. This novel is based on having been given access to an archive of letters, telegrams and official documents in the possession of the Bonham-Carter family. Many of them are reprinted in the novel, several for the first time. The Guardian reviewer said Harris has left the framework of history intact, his only invention being the character of a detective to act as the envoy of the writer and reader. That Harris had constructed a quite brilliant novel about a clandestine love affair.
Now here is the difference between our age and that bygone age. Then this affair was known but only to a small circle of people and they would never have revealed it. Now should something like that happen it will be difficult to keep it secret. It will soon be on social media, television news and in the printed media.
So, observe how the fact that Lord Alli , a Labour peer, gave clothes and spectacles to the Prime Minister and clothes to his wife emerged like a slow drip. And with no Dowing Street plumber able to fix this leak, or even perhaps want to, more stories emerged of gifts like allowing Starmer to use Alli’s luxury flat during the election. Ali also gave gifts to Angela Raynor, the deputy Prime Minister who used his flat in New York where she stayed with a friend. Rachel Reeves got clothes which came from a friend of hers. We also learnt that Starmer had had use of a box at Emirates to watch his beloved Arsenal.
Now there is nothing corrupt about all this. Starmer, Raynor, Reeves declared these gifts. But observe the effect of this stories. All three have said they will no longer receive gifts of clothes. But the fact that they accepted these gifts mean they , seeking to run this country, showed an astonishing political naivete. Starmer has justified it was necessary to use Ali’s flat in order to allow his “boy” to concentrate on his GCSEs and not be distracted by the election. Starmer justified his Arsenal box by saying security reasons meant he could not use his Arsenal season tickets. Reeves said she accepted the clothes because she never has time to go shopping and the friend was helping her out.
However, the working people, the phrase Starmer and Reeves always use, do not have friends who would give them such gifts. By accepting these gifts Starmer, Raynor and Reeves put themselves on a pedestal high above the working people and in a very different class.
The fact is we live in an age, unlike the age of Churchill and Lloyd George, when we expect our politicians to be exactly like us. Starmer and Reeves and the Labour government are constantly telling us hard times are coming. Fasten the seat belts. We need to go through the valleys of deprivation before we see the sunny lands of prosperity. If that is the case then we expect the politicians to fasten their seat belts as well. Not sawn round in luxury while we cut back. That shows there are two worlds one for the politicians and one for us. There may always have been two worlds but in the past our fathers and grandfathers accepted there would be. We don’t. Politicians of our age cannot expect people to make sacrifices when they are not making them as well.
But there is another aspect to this story that is, in some ways, even more worrying. Why did this story of Starmer and his gifts emerge? First we had a story of Lord Ali having a Downing Street pass, something that is unusual and raised questions as to why. Then we started hearing of the gifts that were being given. This was followed by stories of disquiet in Downing Street about how Sue Gray, Starmer’s chief of staff, was earning more than him. That Labour party members who had acted as advisers for MPs when they were in opposition had been offered salaries lower than what their Tory counterparts had got when they worked for Tory ministers. The rewards they expected in helping Labour get to power after fourteen years had not come their way. Instead a select few had profited. All this has bred discontent. Is it any surprise that there are leaks from Downing Street about Starmer and his gifts.
What we have here is a dysfunctional government. When Starmer came to power I felt that while he did not have the charisma of a Blair he would be a good technocrat who would know how to run the government as he had run the CPS one of the biggest organisations in this country. The evidence so far suggests that this assumption may not be right. This is what is most worrying. Starmer is not a word smith. He will never utter a phrase like Blair’s tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime which will resonate. But the expectation has been he would gather competent people round him and give us a government that works. Now it would seem Starmer’s managerial capacity has been exaggerated. I hope I am wrong. But if he cannot manage his Downing Street operation how can he manage the country?
Starmer needs to show quickly that he can be a good manager otherwise it will be difficult to believe that his slogan change means anything.
(Mihir Bose is the author of Thank You Mr Crombie, Lessons in Guilt and Gratitude to the British. Order my new book https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thank-You-Mr-Crombie-Gratitude/dp/1911723006 )
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