A Fondness for Freebies

Say what you like about Keir Starmer, here's a man who enjoys the high life. Designer glasses, nice suits and outfits for the Prime Minister and Victoria Starmer, free Coldplay and Taylor Swift tickets (each to their own), free entry to Arsenal away games with hospitality, theatre tickets ... and centrist champions of the Labour leader have the cheek to call Nigel Farage out for his grifting. This is nothing new for Starmer. When he was the Director of Public Prosecutions, he insisted on a chauffeur driven motor to and from work. And on his watch, the shadow cabinet was effectively auctioned off, with each and every minister - at least those most favoured by capital - equally in receipt of corporate generosity.

Starmer sees nothing wrong with this. The defence put by an equally compromised David Lammy on Sunday's politics shows - that the PM has to take the threads donated by Lord Waheed Alli because Number 10 doesn't offer state-funded clobber - is probably the most pathetic line put out by a minister in recent years. And that includes the dread periods of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Indeed, when Johnson was caught out for getting donors to pay for a garish redecoration of the Downing Street flat he didn't even try to defend it. Which Labour, naturally, attacked the Tories on. It's almost like this government is on fast forward. Just over two months in and we're already at the sleaze/flimsy excuse combo stage.

It's true Starmer hasn't got the most political of brains, which is why he surrounded himself with the most dishonest operators he could find. But bearing that lack of nous in mind, surely even he can see what an appalling look this is. Especially while cutting support for pensioners and promising pain for everyone else. Yet he can't bear the tough choice of digging into his pockets and forking out for clothes and gigs. What an own goal. What an embarrassment.

Why? His statecraft, the project of authoritarian modernisation is, effectively, above politics. No one serious opposes efforts to fix the broken capacities of the state (which, with his promise to cut civil service numbers by a further 100,000, casts Robert Jenrick as the Tory leadership contest's clown-in-residence), or that the economy should grow, and so on. It's only a small step from supposing one's programme is above politics - because it corresponds most closely to the self-evident requirements of British capital - to viewing oneself as recused from the fray. Here, the failing, flailing Emmanuel Macron is the model, not the warning. Though it's the measure of Starmer that while Macron's 'above politics' affectation is done to cobble together governing coalitions, for the PM it's about saving a few quid.

Labour strategists have got to be hoping that most people won't notice or care about Starmer's addiction to freebies. No government money is involved, after all. But for Britain's boardrooms it's reassuring. Contrary to the hysterical opinion pieces that better workers' rights and fixing public services are prefacing full force socialist revolution, Starmer's lorry load of shopping bags and weeks spent in corporate hospitality boxes says loud and clear whose side he's on. That the PM and his cabinet are the sort of people they can do business with, and the snip of treating them like VIPs and paying for an afternoon at Fortnum & Mason's is enough to earn a sympathetic ear and guarantee this Labour government is, in all essentials, their government.

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