Rayner acknowledges ‘anger’ over gifts as row threatens to overshadow conference
Labour began its annual conference on Sunday morning still mired in a row over gifts to senior MPs and questions about the Prime Minister’s chief of staff.
Senior figures sought to move on from the row over donations in a series of interviews on Sunday morning ahead of a conference that had been expected to be a victory lap for the party after its landslide election victory in July.
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner said she understood why people were “frustrated” and “angry” that figures including Sir Keir Starmer had received thousands of pounds in gifts.
But she added these had been “a feature of our politics for a very long time”, arguing that donations were necessary because of the expense of running for office, and stressing the importance of transparency.
Ms Rayner has herself been criticised for staying in a flat owned by Labour donor Lord Waheed Alli while on holiday in New York but denied breaking any Commons rules about declaring the gift.
Meanwhile, the Deputy Prime Minister hit out at reports suggesting strife in Downing Street focused on Sue Gray, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff.
Leaks about Ms Gray’s £170,000 salary while other special advisers have seen their pay held down have contributed to reports of a fractious atmosphere within Number 10 less than three months after coming to power.
But Ms Rayner rejected what she described as a “caricature”, saying the Government was “really focused on making sure we deliver” and that Ms Gray was doing an “exceptional job”.
She added: “It angers me, as someone who has been a trade union rep in the past and who wants to bring workers’ rights, that somehow it’s OK to demonise workers in their workplace through the press and the media.”
Conference
The two rows risk overshadowing the party’s annual conference in Liverpool, with Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson acknowledging they were “frustrating” and “a distraction” for a party wishing to talk about its agenda in Government.
The Prime Minister himself has sought to strike a more optimistic note at the start of the conference, telling a reception on Saturday night he wanted his Government to be compared with Clement Attlee’s administration, which transformed Britain after the Second World War.
He also used interviews with Labour-friendly newspapers to vow that there would be no return to the austerity agenda pursued by David Cameron’s administration.
Sunday has also brought several policy announcements, including “planning passports” aimed at densifying urban areas, a military recruitment drive and plans to revamp the careers service.
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Angela, Women of the people stayed at a rich Donors property in New York and forgot to declare it.
Animal Farm, two houses bad, four houses good!
‘They’ had better morals in Soho during the Seventies, at least the lower ranks received a ‘drink’…
As the ‘taxi driver’ says; they are ‘licking it’…
The Attlee government kept us hungry for six of the nine years after war’s end. Britain was the LAST country involved in the war to stop rationing…
Pigs in lipstick, bs or just unread, you tell me. They all rely on 30% being thick as mince…
Gifts may well have been “a feature of our politics for a very long time”, Ms Rayner, but if your fellow MPs were robbing banks, would you join them in that activity?
The lack of integrity is shocking.
We had 14 years of Conservative sleaze, calamity & chaos where they screwed the public purse , danced on the graves of the Covid dead with partygate before their sick hedonism finally came to an end last May with a change of government , so we all thought. We are only 5 months or so into Keir Starmer’s first term in office as PM where we find the stench of corruption so thick you could cut it with a knife. Labour find themselves knee-deep in the proverbial where a nod and a wink, say no more , will get you… Read more »
Why the reluctance to set some limits. Nothing has changed in the Senedd since Mr Gething was removed for not breaking any donation rules. It’s as though people want their politics murky so they have something to talk about.
So £800,000+ in gifts and donations to Labour cabinet members since January is part of life according to Rayner, as for Phillipson a declared £14,000 donation from Lord Ali for election expenses funded part of her 40th birthday bash in London.
Yes we all know the Tories did it but Starmer promised a new way and has it seems failed before making that statement.
Wales is not immune either, plenty of sporting or concert tickets grasped by politicians, dubious donations or expenses issues.
Good luck with the military recruitment drive.
Go fight for another country’s democracy while we are getting our freedoms and democracy eroded..
Why fight for a country & then a few years down the line get taken to court on allegations so Labour lawyers can make thousands on legal aid…
No chance..
Whatever Angela Rayner says the ‘optics’ look pretty awful for this government at present and that is down to the press and their reporting of Labour and ignoring what should have been the worst optics of the Tory government. We need better and impartial journalism
It is quite a thing to see how this is gamed when it is all declared and in line. The think tanks are earning their loot this last week.
Labour, grrrrr
Same press were silent on the last gov naughties unless it was too much. Patterson is not getting a mention, Boris “I like free stuff” Johnson and the company “better earth” and his appoint to the HoL in on the act sneaking under the radar, quite an interesting list of donors for the Tory leadership, I mean many thousands donated, and so on. But clothes, grrrrr.
You keep complaining about the Tory Press as though that’s where the unfairness lies.
What’s unfair is that the rich get the opportunity to influence the government by lavishing gifts while the poor do not have influence.
You’d think the Labour party would understand that and that it applies to them as it did to to the Tories.
Obviously they didn’t and by some of the comments they’re making some of them still don’t.
Two pigs, one is wearing lipstick…
What concerns me is what favours are granted to donors in exchange for these gifts.