I didn’t expect much from Keir Starmer. Despite being a lifelong Labour supporter, I couldn’t even bring myself to vote for the Party at the General Election. But I’m flabbergasted by what’s happened since.
Our new Prime Minister turns out to have an unexpected taste for the high life. He evidently thinks he’s entitled to it. And he has a tin ear when it comes to criticism. Each day, it becomes clearer that the country is in the hands of a man without a shred of emotional intelligence.
He keeps telling us the economy is in a dire state. It’s doom and gloom for most of us, but not for Starmer and his family. Clothes and glasses for himself, clothes for his wife, a box at his favourite football club, the use of a luxury flat in central London – it’s been one freebie after another.
The Prime Minister doesn’t seem to care how all this looks. Millions of ordinary people are terrified of the coming winter, but he’s doing nicely, thank you very much.
There’s something seriously awry with a man who happily accepts gifts of designer specs, while elderly widows live in fear of not being able to turn their heating on.
It has been revealed that Keir Starmer has been receiving free clothes and glasses for himself, clothes for his wife and a box at his favourite football club, while the Labour Party plans to strip thousands of pensioners of their winter fuel allowance
More than two-thirds of pensioners living in poverty are female, which means they’re disproportionately affected by the axing of the winter fuel allowance, writes JOAN SMITH. Pictured: Karen Mitchell, who was without heating for six weeks last winter
Rachel Reeves and her department have been bullish in their refusal to rule out further cuts elsewhere
It’s a curious blind spot in a politician who usually seems careful not to reveal much about himself.
In an interview shortly before the election, Starmer said he doesn’t dream and he doesn’t have a favourite poem or book. Can he really be so unimaginative? It seems so. Four years ago, on Desert Island Discs, he said he’d like to take an atlas and a football. Either he doesn’t have a hinterland or he’s keeping very quiet about it.
This is not a politician who cuts his coat according to his cloth, generous as that happens to be. The Starmers earn in the region of £200,000 a year between them, but they expect other people to pay the bills.
And it’s no accident that the group that’s been hit hardest by Labour, so far, is women. More than two-thirds of pensioners living in poverty are female, which means they’re disproportionately affected by the axing of the winter fuel allowance.
I’m not sure Starmer or the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, even noticed. For weeks they refused to quash speculation about another cut – abolishing the single person council tax discount – that would hit women harder than men. This week, the Treasury finally appeared to rule it out, but only after weeks of anxiety. What kind of politician behaves so thoughtlessly towards half the population?
One who barely knows what a woman is, I’m afraid. I left the Labour Party in June, disgusted by Starmer’s fumbling attempts to answer this simple question.
Remember when he suggested that one woman in a thousand has a penis? I don’t know what kind of ‘research’ led him to that bizarre conclusion. But I didn’t think a politician with such unscientific views could be trusted with the welfare of women. And I was right.
Ministers have refused to clarify the 2010 Equality Act to make clear that ‘sex’ means biological sex, rather than an idea in some bloke’s head. But they want to make it easier for men to self-ID as women. They even trot out false claims about trans women being the most vulnerable members of society.
They’re not. That would be the elderly widows, like my friend in her 80s whose income is £2 a week above the limit to qualify for pension credit – and she’s lost her £300 fuel allowance as a result. I’ve come to the conclusion that Starmer just doesn’t ‘see’ women, except as people who ask irritating questions during phone-ins.
A couple of years ago, when I was still a Labour member, I asked him to his face what he was going to do about the bullying of women in the party by trans activists. I told him about a meeting in West London where we were surrounded by a screaming mob –and attacked with smoke bombs. I might as well have talked to a door.
His expression was wooden throughout the conversation. I’m still waiting for a reply to the letter I wrote him afterwards. And his government is more open to lobbying by gender warriors than feminists.
Less than three months after entering Downing Street, the Prime Minister comes across as arrogant, out of touch and self-indulgent.
He may complain that he’s being held to higher standards than the Tories, but ‘we’re no worse than the previous lot’ is not much of an excuse. Especially when the Prime Minister’s fondness for freebies is on such a breath-taking scale.
He’s accepted more than £100,000 in gifts since 2019, more than any other MP.
Starmer could have decided a long time ago that it’s not a good look for the Leader of the Labour Party to accept quite so many gifts. If he and his wife are strapped for cash, perhaps they could use charity shops.
There are some excellent ones, stuffed with designer clothes, in Primrose Hill near their North London home. It’s greener than constantly buying new, or is that just for the rest of us? At the very least, he could have avoided the suggestion that he’s entitled to it all. Instead, living so comfortably appears to have blunted his awareness of the struggles other people face.
Keir Starmer has faced questions over why he failed to declare repeatedly using a donor’s £18million penthouse for his political purposes
He says he had to move into his mate’s spacious apartment during the election so his son could study in peace for his GCSEs. But he appears not to realise how many families live in overcrowded homes. Many teenagers have to revise in a bedroom shared with siblings in a noisy council block. Or do their homework in a refuge, where their mother is in hiding from a violent partner.
The Starmers’ son is hardly a ‘looked-after child’, his prospects blighted before he even sits his exams, so spare us the special pleading.
People expect the Tories to look after themselves and their mates. Labour is the party of equality – and even disillusioned voters like myself expect better.
‘Remember you are mortal,’ a slave used to whisper in the ear of Roman generals as they rode in triumph after a victory.
Starmer’s win in July was historic, but his support is shallow. The Prime Minister may feel invulnerable, for the moment. But he seems to have forgotten what Labour stands for.
n Joan Smith is the author of upcoming book Unfortunately, She Was A Nymphomaniac: A New History of Rome’s Imperial Women (William Collins).