Keir Starmer and his top team to stop accepting donations for clothes in major u-turn ahead of party conference
20 September 2024, 17:27 | Updated: 21 September 2024, 00:47
Sir Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves will no longer accept donations to pay for clothing.
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Downing Street sources confirmed the change ahead of Labour's party conference this weekend.
However, it only applies to clothing and glasses, with hospitality and other similar donations still accepted.
It comes after it was revealed that the PM has received over £100,000 of gifts and hospitality since 2019.
Sir Keir came under fire after accepting work clothing donations worth £16,200, and multiple pairs of glasses, to the value of £2,485 from prominent Labour donor Lord Alli.
But until Friday, the PM had continued to defend his actions.
Read more: Keir Starmer faces investigation after failing to declare gifts to wife from party donor
Breaking: Keir Starmer no longer accepting donations for clothes
It emerged that Ms Rayner has also accepted clothing donations worth around £2,200 from Lord Alli.
Ms Reeves admitted that she had accepted money for clothes on Friday too.
She has received around £7,500 for clothing since 2023 from a donor called Juliet Rosenfeld.
The donations were registered as “support” for her office.
One cabinet minister suggested that the No10 operation was responsible for not shutting down the ongoing gifts row sooner - with the Labour conference beginning this weekend.
“[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 told the Times.
"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."
Natasha Clark: Keir Starmer’s statement on clothes donations won’t stifle the criticism
It comes after LBC's Nick Ferrari at Breakfast spoke to Labour's Jess Phillips about the row.
Asked by Nick if it was "a good look" for the Prime Minister to be accepting so many gifts at the same time as stripping millions of pensioners of winter fuel payments, Ms Phillips said: "No one could deny that - but they are two completely separate things."
She added: "And had Keir Starmer never gone to see the Arsenal, we'd still have a... £22 billion black hole, and tough decisions would still have had to be made."
Labour MP claims Keir Starmer uses Arsenal hospitality 'for work reasons'
As well as clothing gifts, Sir Keir has been criticised for accepting corporate hospitality from Arsenal football club - which he has argued is "common sense".
Arsenal gave him use of a corporate box, which he said was due to security costs being disproportionate if he remained in the stands.
Labour MP Gareth Thomas backed the PM on Thursday, telling LBC: "The Prime Minister is under huge, huge pressure in terms of the need to meet and engage with a whole range of business leaders and other community leaders.
"And there are often a range of security concerns that limit his ability to do so.
"So hospitality invitations are often a way to do it."
He continued: "Good conversation, work conversations, do take place in those hospitality settings.
"I don’t know who goes with Mr Starmer to those meetings and I wouldn’t expect to know but what I would say is you do need to engage with a whole variety of people if you're the Prime Minister or indeed if you're a very senior minister too.
"And that’s why hospitality invitations do get accepted."
