There was a touch of Marie Antoinette hauteur about Lady Starmer’s appearance at London Fashion Week yesterday, sporting a flamboyant designer outfit.
If she is remotely embarrassed about having accepted thousands of pounds worth of high-end clothes from a Labour donor, she certainly wasn’t showing it.
But while she and husband Sir Keir, who was provided with snappy suits and spectacles by the same donor, Lord Alli, may want to shrug off this affair as trivial, it matters.
They are a wealthy couple who can well afford to dress themselves. For the Labour leader to accept such largesse and initially fail to declare it appears cheap and potentially compromising.
Looking at the panoply of gifts and hospitality Sir Keir has received from various benefactors since the 2019 election suggests a propensity to freeloading behaviour.
Worth £76,000 in all, they include numerous tickets to see his beloved Arsenal, other big football matches, concerts by Adele and Coldplay, theatre seats, hotel stays, and a £4,500 family holiday on the scenic Gower peninsula.
All this from a man who promised to govern with openness and integrity. Why does he think these very rich people want to curry favour with him? It must surely have crossed his mind that they may want something in return.
Labour still refuses to say who authorised an access all-areas Downing Street pass for Lord Alli, who used it to throw a party for friends and fellow donors.
The widespread suspicion is that Sir Keir must have signed it off himself. If this is not the case, he should say so and tell us who did.
In a mealy-mouthed statement yesterday, he claimed that ‘all the rules were followed’ over declaration of these donations. That may be true in theory, but does it pass the smell test?
While warning of ‘tough decisions’ to come for the rest of us and stripping pensioners of their winter fuel allowance, he and his wife are provided with fashionable new clothes and she with a ‘personal shopper’ at someone else’s expense.
To many, this will smack of hypocrisy and flagrant double standards.
Italian Lessons
From the comfort of opposition, Labour denounced the Tory plan to send illegal migrants to Rwanda for processing as at best a gimmick, at worst a moral outrage.
Now in No10, and with a further 10,000 having crossed the Channel since the election (with dozens drowning), is he coming round to the idea of third country-processing?
Meeting Italy’s leader Giorgia Meloni, the PM expressed interest in her deal for asylum seekers landing on her country’s shores to have their claims assessed in Albania.
If successful, they would be granted entry to Italy, if not, those from ‘predominantly safe’ countries would be sent back.
There are differences between this and the Rwanda scheme, under which successful applicants would have remained there, rather than coming to the UK.
But in principle, they are not dissimilar. Indeed, several other European countries, notably Germany, Denmark and Austria, are now considering using Rwanda to process claims.
If Sir Keir is to stop the human traffic, he must come up with a genuine deterrent. Despite Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s bluster, her new Border Command is little more than window dressing.
As long as migrants know that if they reach the UK they are here to stay, the boats will keep coming – and the deaths will continue to mount.