LAST autumn Keir Starmer faced an embarrassing scandal, as the MPs’ register showed he and his ministers were grabbing loads of free Taylor Swift tickets. It looked like childish, grubby freeloading. 

High-sounding claims of a “government of service” looked unconvincing as Starmer and his ministers took freebies for Swift concerts — typically £500-£1,000 VIP tickets with “hospitality” — and other sporting and musical events. Thanks to newly published “transparency” registers, I can reveal it wasn’t just the MPs: loads of the backroom “special advisers” who direct Labour government policies got the Swift freebie fever too.

A new book by Times journalists Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund suggests Starmer wanted the prime minister’s job because of its prestige, but doesn’t have a strong political “mission,” leaving the political direction to his advisers.

You can see this even when it comes to freebies: Starmer clearly loved the Swift tickets, but they also seem to have been a policy decision across the “backroom boys,” the Spads (special advisers) who give the centrist political direction to our ministers.

The freebies aren’t just shallow greed, they are also a form of lobbying. Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds explained in his defence of “freebie-gate” last year. He said: “It’s not a perk of the job, it’s part of the job. People want to engage with decision-makers. They want to ask you to be aware of what they are doing.” The “people” here are the corporate executives with enough clout to get a minister into a VIP box at a Taylor Swift concert.

Anyway, let’s name some names. Starmer accepted six Swift tickets at two gigs from the Football Association (FA) which, with the Premier League, is lobbying to weaken a proposed football regulator, and four from Swift’s record firm Universal Music, which has multiple business interests. Starmer’s PPS Chris Ward MP took two tickets from the Premier League.

New recently released “transparency registers” show his advisers were grabbing Swift tickets too.

Matthew Doyle, Downing Street director of communications — Starmer’s chief spin doctor — got his Swift ticket free from Victoria Newton, editor of The Sun. 

Jill Cuthbertson, Starmer’s deputy chief of staff and “one of the prime minister’s most relied-upon political organisers and gatekeepers,” got tickets for her and her husband from Universal Music.

Darren Jones MP, chief secretary to the Treasury, got his “Swiftie” tickets from the FA. Ben Nunn, Rachel Reeves’s director of communications and key “Starmer” figure, also got two Swift tickets from the FA. Before working for Reeves, Nunn rotated between working for Starmer and various centrist Labour MPs and lobbying companies like Lexington Communications, so he is very used to how schmoozing works.

The FA took Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson to see Swift. Her Spad, Rosy Roche, was also taken to see Swift — by iNHouse Communications, a lobbying firm set up by former Boris Johnson staff that represents firms like Uber and Google.

Wembley Stadium paid for Wes Streeting to see Swift. The FA took Streeting’s policy adviser Kirsty O’Brien to see Swift at Wembley.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper didn’t take Swift freebies, but her whole team went to Swift’s August 15 Wembley gig: Amy Richards, her chief of staff, her Spads Jess Leigh and Natasha Collett — who has worked both for Labour and lobbyists Portland before joining government — went. So did Cooper’s other Spad, Damian McBride. Back in 2009 McBride was a Spad to Gordon Brown. He since admitted to leaking stories to smear both opposition politicians and out-of-favour Labour ministers back then. All this ugly business was presumably forgotten as Swift sang.

Louis Carserides, who was then Spad to Environment Secretary Steve Reed, says he accepted “concert tickets” from industry lobby group MusicUK, but he doesn’t say what they were. As with MPs, the Spads grabbed lots of non-Swift freebies.

American Express gave a ticket to the women’s final at Wimbledon last July to Downing Street comms director Matthew Doyle. Matt Pound, Rachel Reeves’s political secretary and a key Labour right figure, went to the same match courtesy of the Lawn Tennis Association. Ian Parker, Spad to Labour’s leader in the House of Lords, Baroness Smith, saw the England v India cricket match at the Oval courtesy of phone firm Three.

Cross-party cuts agenda

WES STREETING appointed Baroness Camilla Cavendish, who previously led David Cameron’s Number 10 Policy Unit, onto the board of the Department for Health this month, saying he wanted to have “cross-party” figures of “different political persuasions” to guide the NHS. 

He wants to build a “cross-party consensus” to “reform the NHS.” But what is this consensus? In 2007, when Labour’s Gordon Brown was prime minister Cavendish wrote that “the hungry maw of the NHS is swallowing more and more resources, at the expense of virtually everything else.” 

Cavendish denounced the NHS as “Britain’s last big state monopoly,” complaining that “its powerful unions view any slowdown in spending growth as a ‘cut.’ And cut is a deadly word in political terms.” 

Cavendish said the NHS badly needs more “innovation,” which is only possible “by introducing competition.” Cavendish said New Labour had not gone far enough down this road. She welcomed Tony Blair’s attempts to “introduce competition” by letting private providers carry out some operations, and the introduction of foundation trusts, but claimed: “Ministers are too easily persuaded that the battle is between public and private provision. They are ashamed to endorse the private.” 

She was worried Brown did not believe enough in “market-based reform” of the NHS. She said the health service was “a bloated state” and argued “the writing is on the wall: a tax-funded free healthcare system is looking ever less sustainable.”  

The NHS was certainly in better state in 2007 than now. However, while the idea it was bloated, overfunded and needed more privatisation might appeal to Streeting, it doesn’t appeal to Labour voters. Cavendish went on to join Cameron’s No 10 operation in 2015, when the Tory PM did indeed stick with more NHS privatisation and less NHS money. 

Cavendish is expected by Streeting to sit with former Labour health minister Alan Milburn on the Department of Health board and build up a consensus for NHS reform. Both seem drawn to Cameron’s approach — accepting and accelerating New Labour’s NHS privatisation, while adding Tory spending reductions.