Despite all the free concert tickets the Labour lot received to her gigs, Taylor Swift seems to be causing Sir Keir Starmer’s top team rather a lot of trouble. The US singer’s mother demanded special security measures for her daughter while she performed in London – and Starmer’s crowd capitulated. Today it has emerged in the Sun that, according to Whitehall insiders, Sir Keir’s former chief of staff Sue Gray played a crucial role in convincing police to provide taxpayer-funded protection to the American pop star. Talk about being the Anti-Hero, eh?
Gray’s name cropped up following reports that police were concerned about the request to grant Swift a blue-light escort to the gigs. Scotland Yard requested legal advice from the Attorney General about offering the public purse-funded service to the US singer as the Met Police were insistent there was no specific threat against Swift. How curious…
The latest update follows revelations in the Sun last week that Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and London mayor Sadiq Khan had personally intervened to provide the American singer with a type of protection reserved only for senior royals and politicians. Former Tory leadership candidate James Cleverly was quick to blast Cooper last week, reminding the Secretary of State that ‘the role of the Special Escort Group…is not for use by private individuals or as traffic assistants for pop stars’. Quite.
And, of course, it never takes too long for the freebie fiasco to rear its head. It has been noted that the Home Secretary received a free concert ticket to Swift’s summer shows not so long before getting involved in the singer’s security measures – attending with her husband Ed Balls as a guest of Taylor’s music label, Universal Music. More than that, it transpires that the Prime Minister himself accepted free tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras tour – after the US singer had gotten her special protection. Now questions are being asked about whether the PM’s gifts were in fact a ‘thank you’ present from the pop star for the unconventional favour – although Downing Street has rejected these suggestions. The plot thickens…
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