It looks as though Keir Starmer kept the gifts he received from the public secret until after the general election result
There is a scandal in the making in UK in the ‘glasses for passes’ affair now in its second week which does not look as though it will go away quietly.
The last thing the new Labour government wanted for its conference last week was to have to justify gifts of expensive glasses and clothing to the prime minister and his wife worth about £32,000 and counting – the latest addition of £16,000 was previously passed off as office expenses.
The facts are coming out in dribs and drabs which does not look good for Keir Starmer as it appears the gifts were kept from the public to abide the result of the general election. The facts are that a temporary pass to visit Downing Street was given to Labour peer Lord Waheed Alli which was portrayed in the media as privileged access to the prime minister after it was linked to gifts Lord Alli made to the prime minister and his wife of clothes and use of his penthouse flat in Covent Garden once the gifts were registered in the public register of interests.
Lord Waheed Alli is a self-made millionaire who was elevated to the House of Lords by Tony Blair shortly after he became prime minister in 1997. Lord Alli’s largesse is not confined to Starmer. He has also been generous to other Labour cabinet ministers, including Angela Rayner when she was shadow deputy PM and Wes Streeting when he was shadow health minister among others.
It is not unusual or in breach of gift etiquette to give items of clothing as presents or a breach of the ministerial code to receive them. People frequently give ties, scarves and capes and gifts of money for dresses and suits – the last two need to be purchased by the recipient personally. Gifts of jewellery and Rolex watches much favoured by Arab princes are also normal, but problematic as they are ostentatiously expensive.
Imran Khan, Pakistan’s former prime minister ended up in prison for allegedly reselling jewellery and other expensive gifts which he received as prime minister because he was supposed to keep them in a state treasure house known as toshakhana.
A justification of sorts for accepting gifts of money for the clothes was offered by UK foreign minister David Lammy last Sunday, although it was not clear he was speaking for the PM. He said that unlike the US there is no budget for the prime minister and his wife to have their clothing paid for by the British state “to look their best” for their country. Actually, there is no budget in the US for the first lady’s wardrobe – which apparently can be substantial. The €50,000 budgeted for the president would be very modest if used to pay for the first lady’s clothes.
Few would argue with a gift of money to the PM for visits to London’s world famous bespoke tailors in Savile Row for a few made-to-measure suits, and there is no shortage of women’s fashion houses prepared to provide Lady Starmer with the latest in women’s fashion gratis.
The complaint against Starmer, however, was that he was late to register the gifts he and his wife received from Lord Waheed Alli and that the delay in registering them as gifts of clothing after the election appears to have been calculated.
As a rich Labour peer Lord Alli is entitled to donate as much money to the Labour party as he likes. The problem is that he seems to have overdone his generosity, which looks bad because it is excessive and the gifts are given to individual members of the government personally that makes the PM and his ministers look beholden to him. The ministerial code says that ‘no minister should accept gifts or hospitality or services from anybody which would, or might appear to, to place him under an obligation’ and Lord Alli’s excessive generosity to individual members of the government is not good optics.
The glasses for passes affair is reminiscent of the cash for questions scandal in the last years of John Major’s Conservative government in the 1990s and looks awful at the beginning of the Labour government’s term in office after 14 years in opposition.
Cash for questions was obviously corrupt. What happened there was that Harrods owner Mohammed Al Fayed, who was refused UK citizenship for his bad character, accused a Conservative MP, Neil Hamilton, of accepting cash and lavish entertainment at the Paris Ritz, to ask questions in parliament about the refusal. In light of the sexual offences Al Fayed is alleged to have committed that dominated the news last week, the refusal on account of his bad character was as sound as it was prescient.
Hamilton brought a libel action against Al Fayed for alleging he paid him to ask questions in parliament in which George Carman QC defending Al Fayed memorably told the jury that Hamilton was a greedy man ‘on the make and on the take’.
The question hanging over the Labour prime minister and senior members of his cabinet is whether they too appear to be a greedy bunch of politicians ‘on the make and on the take’ for accepting gifts from Lord Waheed Alli.
Starmer also received corporate football match hospitality worth thousands of pounds but few would begrudge him football match hospitality or his attendance in the directors’ box at the Emirates stadium. He has been an Arsenal fan all his life and special seating in the directors’ box is necessary for his security.
Keir Starmer has now promised that he and members of his cabinet will not accept gifts for clothes, which is a bit over the top. The better course is to give Lord Alli a wide berth for a while.
Alper Ali Riza is a king’s counsel in the UK and a former part time judge
