Another day, another Labour sleaze scandal. Guido is told Labour MP for York Outer Luke Charters recently handed a cushy job to Owen Trotter, a Labour donor who’s coughed up over £55,000 to the party since 2019. Trotter, who chucked nearly £8,000 Charters’ way just this summer for his campaign – all properly declared – now conveniently finds himself as the MP’s Parliamentary Office Manager. It seems Charters has followed in the footsteps of others in the party with donors elevated to plum positions…
Unsurprisingly, local Tories are furious. Chris Steward, Leader of the Conservative Group on York Council, said:
“Luke Charters is the latest Labour MP to throw his morals down the toilet. Why on earth has he given a job in Parliament to a man who handed him almost £8,000? Luke urgently needs to clarify whether Owen Trotter is being paid by the taxpayer in his role as Office Manager. We also need to know what process was followed in appointing him to this role and whether the job was fully opened up to other candidates.”
Trotter certainly has a lot on his plate outside his new role. He’s already a Managing Partner at Key Capital Partners, a Leeds-based private equity firm involved in private healthcare, and also serves on the governing body of the University of York. He also stood to be the Labour candidate for North Yorkshire Mayor in 2023, though clearly didn’t make the cut. He’s finally made it into the walls of Westminster now though…
Guido contacted both offices of Luke and Owen for a comment.
Ellie Reeves has ‘updated’ the Commons on rule changes Labour is pursuing in the ongoing freebiegate scandal. Reeves blames the Tories for an anodyne discrepancy between ministerial declarations and MP declarations…
Reeves says the government will close Tories’ “freebie loophole” with a new version of the register of ministers’ gifts and hospitality – to function on a “broadly equivalent” basis to the MP register. The ministerial register is only different in that the value of gifts is not declared and it is published every quarter as opposed to every fortnight. Altering that system does nothing to address Labour’s rank hypocrisy over months of freebies revelations…
Seeing as the Tories managed to get an Urgent Question in Shadow Paymaster General John Glen asked Reeves for a few clarifications, including:
Reeves launched on the Tories in response and said she’d “take no lectures” as Labour backbenchers are rolled out to list historic Tory freebie-taking. Pressed on Swiftgate, Reeves stuck to the line that the top-level security motorcade was an “operational matter” for the police, despite the fact that the Attorney General, Mayor of London, Sue Gray, and the Home Secretary all personally got involved in lobbying the Met. Labour’s lines on the latest freebiegate scandal are going as well as all the last ones…
The row over Taylor Swift’s concert freebies has been hilariously extended for another day. Labour was forced to defend lobbying the police for a motorcade for Swift while accepting freebie tickets from her record label…
The optics weren’t as bad as they could have been yesterday seeing as everyone clarified that Home Secretary Yvette Cooper hadn’t taken freebie tickets to the concert – of the two, only Sadiq Khan had. Sky News’ Sam Coates reported last night that Ed Balls had though – and brought his wife along…
Now it’s clear that both Khan and Cooper received free premium tickets and pressed security services to do Swift a favour. Cooper didn’t declare them at the time as they fell under the threshold, though she now has. Was probably worth fessing up to when the first story broke…
Jonathan Reynolds is up on Good Morning Britain soon to answer an interviewer’s questions. Guido can think of just the man for the job…
UPDATE: Nandy yesterday, of course, was briefed that Cooper “didn’t attend the concerts.” Top quality briefing that…
Kay Burley and Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy have been arguing on Sky News this morning over the ridiculousness of the government lobbying the police to give Taylor Swift a presidential-style motorcade to a gig. Tickets for which were being handed out by her record label to the PM and his ministers…
Nandy eventually caved under pressure and launched on an offensive:
“You know, we’re now in a situation where I mean you know most of Sky News was at these events in these same boxes as well to be completely fair.”
Burley hit back: “Who was there? I paid for my tickets. Don’t do that, no.” Nandy claimed Keir Starmer had paid for his too. A few weeks late, mind…
Nandy couldn’t name any other Sky personnel who went along for free when asked and ended with: “People can judge for themselves.“ A cruel summer for cronies…
Boris has done a long interview with Wilfred Frost on Sky News. Apart from pointing out that the public ‘craved’ lockdown rules, Boris had a few words about his old chum Sue Gray:
“I appointed Sue Gray, who then turned out to be the Chief of Staff leader of the Labour Party – RIP… “
Boris issued his analysis of the current Downing Street implosion:
“At the time that I asked her to do that particular job, she had presented to me as a model of political impartiality and propriety, and I’m not certain about either of those things…. I thought it was always looking a bit dodgy – her position was probably going to be untenable ever since it emerged that her son had taken money from Waheed Alli, and that she’d then given Waheed Alli a pass to No 10. I thought that was probably going to end in the way that it has.”
Cronies gonna crony…
Politics Live today has seen fiery exchanges between Energy Minister Miatta Fahnbulleh and critics of Labour’s extreme freebie donation hypocrisy. Brexit veteran Lord Stewart Jackson had a few choice words for Labour:
“We’ve seen a bacchanalian orgy of greed – this is ridiculous frankly and with respect you’re responsible for the the way people are thinking about this I have no problem with people taking hospitality and declaring it in the rules. But the Labour Party have this sort of moral relativism where they say ‘it’s all right for us because we’re the virtuous ones and the Tories are uniquely greedy self-serving incompetent et cetera.’ The number one political rule is: don’t believe your own PR.”
Jackson pointed out that the problem is the hypocrisy: “you’ve framed the debate in terms of ‘the Tories are greedy’ and people hate hypocrisy from politicians.” He added interestingly that the public “will forgive a sex scandal… what they loath is hypocrisy.” It’s not letting up for Downing Street…
