Sir Keir Starmer and his top team will no longer accept donations for clothes after the prime minister bowed to pressure from senior colleagues.
The prime minister’s allies admitted on Friday night that there was a “perception” issue after he accepted £16,000 worth of clothing and glasses worth £2,485 paid for by Lord Alli, a prominent Labour donor.
Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, admitted accepting £7,500 in donations for clothing that were registered as “support” for her office. Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, accepted donations worth £3,550 from Alli that was declared as a “donation in kind for undertaking parliamentary duties”.
Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, said on Saturday morning that Labour’s top team had decided to no longer accept clothing donations because they did not want people to believe that ministers were “living very different lives from them”.
She told BBC Breakfast it was important that the public knows that most of those who go into politics are “ordinary people who want to make people’s lives better” and that the government has their priorities “absolutely up front and centre of ours”.
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The decision, which is only applicable to clothing and glasses, rather than hospitality and other similar donations, represents a significant reversal by Starmer on the eve of Labour’s first conference since winning the election. He had previously defended the £100,000 he had received in donations for clothing, gifts and hospitality, insisting that it was all properly declared. Cabinet ministers publicly supported him by saying that it was important that the prime minister should look his best on behalf of the British people.
Alli also bought clothes worth more than £5,000 and provided a personal shopper for Starmer’s wife, Victoria.
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The decision by Reeves and Rayner to declare the donations as generic gifts rather than specifically clothing is likely to raise questions over Starmer’s promise to lead a government of transparency.
One cabinet minister suggested that the No 10 operation, which has been embroiled in a briefing war this week, was to blame for failing to shut the row down. “[Starmer] needs people who will make sure there’s not a distraction around this kind of thing so he can focus on the big issues,” the minister said. “There was nothing transactional about this and maybe he should have been a bit more up front with a bit of humour and said ‘yes, a friend helped me smarten up a bit’. If you are from a working-class background you always think you have to look the part. It’s only the posh who can be scruffy.”
Starmer’s climbdown comes as new polling for The Times suggests that the scandal, and other recent controversies, have brought Labour’s honeymoon to an abrupt end. The YouGov poll found that one in seven of those who voted for Labour less than three months ago now regret doing so.
Fifty-three per cent of voters — including a fifth of those who backed Labour in July — believe Starmer is doing badly as prime minister, while 34 per cent think he is doing well.
Fifty-four per cent of voters said they were aware of Starmer’s clothing claims, with 64 per cent saying his decision to accept so-called freebies for his wife was unacceptable.
While some MPs and senior party figures are understood to have made their concerns over the donations known to party whips, several Labour grandees chose to speak out in public.
Baroness Harman, a former Labour deputy leader, warned Starmer that his decision to “double down” and justify the money was a “misstep” and was “making things worse”.
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Lord Blunkett, a former home secretary, said Starmer risked accusations of hypocrisy after repeatedly attacking the Conservative scandals while in opposition. “ ‘One rule for them and one law for the rest of us’, which we used in opposition applies equally to us,” he told Times Radio.
John McDonnell, the former shadow chancellor, attacked Starmer for being “expensively clothed by rich sponsors”.
As well as the £3,550 “donation in kind”, Rayner also received £8,500 in October, £8,250 in March and £900 in April from Alli, which were declared as money to “support” her in her “capacity as deputy leader of the Labour Party”, the Financial Times reported.
Alli has been a big Labour donor for more than two decades after making an estimated £200 million in the TV industry. He attracted controversy being given a Downing Street pass for what the prime minister said involved “transition work” after the election.
Starmer’s allies have insisted that Alli had no ulterior motive for donations. “There is nothing you could give Waheed,” one said. “The only thing he didn’t have was a Labour government.”
