When, in the first micro-scandal of his premiership, Keir Starmer was found to be partial to the odd freebie, his Reform opponents were quick to latch on to it.
The prime minister and Arsenal fan was found to have received the most hospitality tickets of any MP for matches in the Premier League, Championship and Champions League totalling just under £13,000 – donated to him by the Premier League and seven English clubs.
More embarrassingly, it emerged he had received a number of gifts from Lord Alli, a media entrepreneur and Labour peer, including, to many people’s bemusement, multiple pairs of glasses worth a total of £2,485.
The revelations were a gift to Reform, with leader and well-remunerated GB News presenter Nigel Farage pulling a pair of glasses out of his pocket as he addressed his party’s annual conference in Birmingham, putting them on and telling delegates, to much hilarity, “Do you like them? Very expensive but guess what, I bought them myself, how about that?” It’s the way he tells them.
Chief whip and call-a-spade-a-shovel man of the people Lee Anderson, meanwhile, got pious about Starmer’s football freebies, the well-remunerated GB News presenter saying: “My season ticket at Forest is £700. I stand – not sit – in the noisiest part of the ground with the most vocal of all fans.
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“We sing, we cheer, we boo and aim a few choice words at the ref and the opposing team. At half time fellow fans talk to me about politics. Try it, Keir Starmer – you might learn where you’re going wrong.”
Hypocrisy, much? New entries registered in the Commons’ Register of Members’ Interests show that Farage received an approximate £10,000 in kind for his recent trip to the Abu Dhabi Formula One GP – enough for four pairs of the swanky specs bought for Starmer by Lord Alli.
Farage’s payment totalled approximately £500 for accommodation and an eye-watering £4,500 each for paddock passes for both himself and an un-named “non-staff member”. The entry does say it was “to attend the F1 and for meetings”, although quite what business he’d have there is unclear. Perhaps he plans to steal the British GP from under the noses of Silverstone and host it on the streets of Clacton?
Anderson, meanwhile, may well pay £700 for his season ticket – but his £100,000 annual GB News salary won’t, apparently, pay for him to follow his team’s exploits in the Europa League. His latest entry to the register shows that his match ticket, with hospitality, to attend the home game against Malmö FF in November – estimated value of £750 – was paid for by the club instead.
That hospitality was presumably enjoyed sitting down, not standing, and in the VIP area, not “in the noisiest part of the ground with the most vocal of all fans”. And £750, using 30p Lee’s logic, would pay for 2,500 meals for children in Anderson’s Ashfield constituency.
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