The freebie scandal could cost Keir Starmer

If you want a surefire indication that a politician has ended up on the wrong side of public opinion, it’s when they start saying: ‘The public don’t really care about this stuff. They want us to focus on the issues that matter to them instead’. 

So far, this has been the response from the government to the freebie scandal. Keir Starmer has had Taylor Swift tickets and £2,000-worth of glasses gifted to him. His wife has had clothes given to her. And the PM’s reaction? ‘It was because I insist on the rules that my team reached out to make sure we were declaring in the right way under the rules and then reached out again to the appropriate authorities…’ It’s the equivalent of ‘nothing to see here’. People desperately want the government to find ways to make life less of a struggle, to tackle waiting lists and to put more police on the streets.