GEORGE OSBORNE liked to claim that “we are all in it together” as he embarked on the austerity programme that eviscerated public services and impoverished millions.
We were not, of course. The rich did very well for themselves during Osborne’s chancellorship, with tax cuts and rising incomes as wages stagnated for working people, and they carried on doing so as long as the Tories remained in office.
However, Keir Starmer could not even dare utter the phrase today for fear of being booed off the stage.
Despite election promises, he has ploughed on with austerity. The two-child benefit cap, which cruelly punishes children in poverty, remains in place. And millions of pensioners look to the coming winter with trepidation as their fuel allowance is abandoned altogether.
But Starmer’s austerity has its limits, and they stop at his own front door. Every day brings fresh revelations regarding the Prime Minister’s shameless grifting.
He received more gifts from the rich than all previous Leaders of the Opposition put together, since records started being kept, to a total of more than £100,000.
The multimillionaire Lord Alli, a long-standing Labour donor whose favoured means of donating appears to be through showering the leader with personal gifts, bought him more than £16,000-worth of suits.
He also paid for several pairs of glasses for Starmer, as well as buying dresses for the Prime Minister’s wife.
Now we learn that Starmer took up residence in Lord Alli’s luxury penthouse in Covent Garden for much of the general election campaign.
Lord Alli was then the recipient of a Downing Street pass after Starmer took office, for reasons which have hardly been adequately clarified.
On top of all this, Starmer seems to have regularly scrounged free tickets to football matches and pop concerts.
He makes a virtue of having declared all this in line with the rules, albeit belatedly in the case of Victoria Starmer’s freebie frocks.
But he does not answer the question as to why he could not pay his own way when it comes to buying suits or going to see Arsenal. It is not as if he was not sufficiently well-paid, with his opposition leader’s salary on top of his elaborate pension arrangements from his shift as chief state prosecutor.
Nor does he address what message this sends at a time when he is daily reminding the country how straitened its circumstances are. Certainly, there is no “black hole” in the funding of the premier’s lifestyle — it is more than adequately filled by his cronies.
There has seldom been a clearer example of “do as I say, not as I do” from a leading politician. Starmer appears addicted to perks, regardless of the negative political impact.
No doubt in Liverpool he will repeat his warnings of more misery to come from next month’s Budget, and underline the desperate economic legacy he inherited from the Tories.
But standing in a suit and glasses provided by a multimillionaire is not the best look for urging the country to tighten belts which they paid for themselves.
Clearly, the Prime Minister intends to sacrifice nothing personally, and is indifferent as to how the public perceives his cupidity.
This may not seem the biggest problem facing the Labour Party as it gathers in conference. But perceptions matter greatly in contemporary politics, and the growing sense that the Prime Minister is happy to live lavishly off rich donors is surely causing damage.
Austerity and sleaze combined to sink the Tories after 14 years. After not 14 weeks, Starmer has tarnished his government in exactly the same fashion — a gift to the Tories.
