Dear oh dear. The Home Secretary, the London mayor and even Sir Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff have all been in the firing line over the Taylor Swift security row – and now the Prime Minister is under the microscope. It transpires that after Labour figures pushed police to give special protection to the star during her London shows – on the orders of her manager and mother – the PM was not only given free tickets to her Wembley gig but even accepted backstage access to Swift at the event. Good heavens…
The latest update, broken by the Sun newspaper, comes after the news that singer’s mother insisted that the global pop icon received VVIP police security usually reserved for senior royals and politicians while she performed in the UK – and threatened that if she didn’t, Swift’s shows would be cancelled. It then emerged that Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and London mayor Sadiq Khan had personally intervened in the case, with reports that the Met police felt pressured to capitulate. Officers were uncomfortable about offering the public purse-funded service to the US singer as forces insisted there was no specific threat against Swift, and Scotland Yard even requested legal advice from the Attorney General on the issue. Crikey.
The revelation that the PM was given 10 minutes of backstage access to the singer, and even got to introduce his family to US pop sensation after the whole policing palaver, ties into the ongoing freebie fiasco dogging the Labour lot at present. It turned out the Home Secretary attended Swift’s show on gifted tickets just before her, er, helpful intervention over the star’s security. And Mr S is rather bemused as to why, after the police had been pushed to provide the pop icon with a special envoy – a decision Starmer’s then-chief of staff Sue Gray was said to have been involved in, according to Whitehall sources – Sir Keir himself appeared to think it was a good idea to accept £2,600 worth of concert tickets from Swift’s own music label. Talk about a lack of political nous…
No. 10 was adamant on Tuesday that it was ‘entirely legitimate’ for ministers to hold talks with police forces over security for major events – but Steerpike wonders quite how the public will react to the news. Not least as it comes after Labour’s cronyism row, anger at the government’s winter fuel payment cuts and weeks of bad press over the PM’s recently-replaced chief of staff. It’s certainly been an eventful start to the job, eh?
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