Starmer’s army in private plane hypocrisy

Well, well, well. Off the back of his thumping majority, Sir Keir Starmer has been making good use of the perks of being premier. Given Labour’s long history of bashing Rishi Sunak for flying private, one might have thought that the fleet of government jets at their disposal would be stowed away in a hanger. That’s not quite the case…

The Starmer army attitude towards private planes has changed quite significantly over the past year. At Labour’s party conference in October, Rachel Reeves criticised Sunak for his ‘private jet habit’, pledging to enforce tighter rules on ministerial use of private jets under a Labour government. In January, Angela Rayner accused Sunak of ‘jetting around the country on taxpayers’ money like an A-list celeb’ after he took a 36 minute flight from London to Middlesborough and a 45-minute flight from London to Blackpool. Sir Keir slammed Sunak for the trips, adding that ‘the view on the ground is very different to that from his private jet’.