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. But it’s a mistake to think the public doesn’t care about the state of our politics too.
Starmer is clearly frustrated by this row
Having moderated hundreds of focus groups over the past few years, in very different parts of the country, with very different groups of voters, there were two common themes that united Labour and Conservative, Reform and Green party voters alike – that our politics isn’t working for ordinary people and that our politicians are in it for themselves.
From the Owen Paterson lobbying row to Partygate and MPs gambling on the election date, the public felt that the last parliament was littered with egregious examples of ‘one rule for them, another for the public’. But what Labour seem not to have realised is that the public didn’t just associate these scandals with one party. Even though Conservative incumbents suffered the electoral cost, the public felt what they were seeing was typical of our political class as a whole.
And the public’s response wasn’t just to roll their eyes, or to adopt a common (and healthy) cynicism about politics. Listen in to focus groups and you would instead hear a palpable sense of anger – one that runs deep and should worry politicians across the board.
Voters made their disenchantment clear on election day, with 40 per cent of the electorate deciding to not vote altogether. Those who did cast a ballot gave the lowest share of support for the two main parties in modern history. With millions backing anti-establishment parties such as Reform and Greens, or voting for independents, the backlash against politics as usual was plain to see.
Keir Starmer seemed to understand this – recognising that the problems of government weren’t just about delivery, but that a politics that respected ordinary people was missing. His pledge to offer a ‘Government of Service’ was well tuned to a public who wanted politicians to recognise they worked for them, not their own pockets. But that recognition of the problem makes the reaction to the fallout from freebie-gate more confusing.
It should be apparent to anyone who spends any time engaging with public opinion (or who chats to anyone outside of SW1) that the median public reaction to donors paying for the Starmers’ clothes or hospitality would be ‘no one pays for my clothes, no one pays for me to attend football matches, and I earn a lot less than the Prime Minister’. Little wonder our latest polling found just 7 per cent of the public believe receiving donations for clothing is acceptable.
A sense that politicians are benefitting from their office is made worse by this scandal coming alongside Labour’s warning that difficult decisions lie ahead. Senior politicians enjoying donations of designer clothes or VIP trips to sporting events and concerts, while at the same time asking pensioners to manage without the winter fuel allowance, is likely to go down like a lead balloon.
Starmer is clearly frustrated by this row and doesn’t feel like he has done anything wrong. He followed ‘the rules’. But that is the same attitude the public saw from Boris Johnson during Partygate. Starmer’s task is now to avoid repeating Johnson’s mistake of doubling down until it’s too late. No. 10 should announce new, tighter rules on donations, and return some of the previous donations. More than that – he should use his conference speech next week to talk about how Labour will make reality their pledge to offer a ‘Government of Service’. It can’t just be a catchphrase.
As the precipitous drop in Starmer’s approval ratings shows, the new government does not have much political capital to spare. It needs to take back the agenda and stop this freebie scandal from happening again. Failing to do so will not just be bad for the Labour party, but bad for the public’s faith in our political system itself.
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