Labour repaid £100,000 to Davide Serra yesterday; a donor accused of sexual harassment. The high-flying City financier is accused of making “wholly inappropriate” comments about the size of a female colleague’s breasts. He also allegedly suggested that his head of business development and investor relations, Jolanda Niccolini, would do anything for her clients – ‘including prostitute herself’. Unsurprisingly, this led to Ms. Niccolini taking legal action, resulting in a tribunal judge ordering Mr. Serra’s firm to part with £32,000 in compensation.
Labour’s discomfort didn’t end there yesterday, as another donor, Dale Vince, decided to take his philanthropy to the streets. He joined an eco-protest in London with his well-funded group, Just Stop Oil raising suspicions that he may have had some influence on Sir Keir’s promise to halt North Sea oil and gas exploration. Stay tuned for the next donor drama…
Keir Starmer has refused once again to rule out a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. Speaking to Nick Ferrari on LBC this morning, Starmer was asked eight times – surely a record – whether he’d agree to a coalition with the LibDems… and the best he could say was “wait and see”:
“I’m not in the business of talking about deals or pacts… I would say we’re going for a majority and you know, I’m not taking this… well look Nick we’re going to have to see what the situation is next year.”
Having dismissed the idea of “talking about pacts or deals” with the LibDems, for some reason it didn’t take Ferrari eight attempts to get Starmer to rule out the same talks with the SNP. He managed to answer that question in one go, at least…
PMQs this week again focused on – surprise, surprise – strikes and the state of the NHS. Rishi remonstrated on his new minimum service level legislation, before rounding off his performance with one well-targeted attack line:
“When it comes to the honourable gentleman, he isn’t just for the free movement of people. He’s also got the free movement of principles.”
As the Home Secretary nodded on enthusiastically, the mood of Tory MPs was surmised by one jeer from the green benches. “Another one lost, Keir”…
Keir Starmer tells Times Radio he’s broken the activists rule on snogging Tories…
“Well I’m afraid I’ve broken that rule. I’m not tribal. I think this actually comes from coming into politics later in life. Outside of politics, most of the time, most people at home or at work see a problem, get people around and try to fix it and bring people together, bridge people together and do it. That’s what I bring to politics. Therefore, I’ve worked across parties. I’m on very good terms with many, many Tory MPs. I’m not ashamed about it and I’ve got very good friends who are Tories and they’ve been very, very good friends of mine for a very, very long time and long may that last.”
Once again Keir Starmer’s Labour party are saying one thing and doing the opposite.
Whilst Sir Keir has enforced a shadow cabinet boycott of the Qatar World Cup, citing human rights abuses against workers and LGBT people, his top team have accepted thousands of pounds in trips to similarly egregious destinations. Since 2016, they amount to around £60,000…
Amongst the worst offenders are Ed Miliband, who received a hamper worth £2,500 from the Sultan of Brunei – the absolute monarch of a country where sexual relations between men are punishable by death. Miliband says he gave it to charity…
Rosena Allin-Khan diversified her sources of ignoble freebies, raking in over £7,500 from Poland, Bangladesh, Jordan and Qatar. Jon Ashworth and Ian Murray have also each made trips to the World Cup host since 2016. Guido wonders what has changed in Qatar to relegate it from a favourite destination of the shadow cabinet between 2016 and 2021 to utterly unconscionable now…
For the interest of co-conspirators, a more comprehensive list of MP’s travel sponsors is as follows:
Perhaps the hypocrisy of Sir Keir’s virtue-signalling boycott is why he’s been unable to convince Mark Drakeford to follow suit…
