Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour lot have had a tough time of it lately with the freebie fiasco – and it’s only getting worse. Now it transpires that Labour figures received gifts from the gambling sector worth, er, over £1 million. Talk about a bad bet, eh?
Starmer’s army accepted a range of items from the industry – including tickets to musicals and football matches – with key Cabinet figures implicated. It has emerged that his winter fuel payment-cutting Chancellor Rachel Reeves took three tickets for a show in 2023 from the Betting Gaming Council, alongside £20,000 of donations from gambling organisations for her private office prior to the election. Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds took a Wembley ticket worth £3,457 for a European Championship match from Entain, a company in charge of Ladbrokes and Sportingbet. And Transport Secretary Louise Haigh thought it was a good idea to accept hospitality tickets for a League One football match in Wembley from Entain, in a £1,400 gifting bid from the firm. The PM himself accepted a £25,000 donation for his leadership campaign in 2020, from none other than the chief exec of Bet365. Alright for some…
The news that the Labour lot have accepted £1.08 million from those connected to the gambling industry has certainly raised eyebrows, not least because it adds to the pressure on Sir Keir over the freebie scandal – with links to millionaire businessman Lord Alli – that has dampened his party’s mood in recent weeks. Longtime foe Rosie Duffield even quit the party last week after blasting the Starmtroopers over ‘sleaze, nepotism and apparent avarice’, slamming Starmer as being unfit for the top job after ‘inexplicably’ accepting clothing donations from Alli while enforcing unpopular policies like the winter fuel payment cut. The public tend to agree, with a recent poll revealing that Starmer’s government is preferred less than Rishi Sunak’s boys in blue – despite the new government being less than three months old. Talk about a short honeymoon…
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