Keir Starmer 'will no longer accept donations for clothes' after row over £100,000 in freebies

Keir Starmer will no longer accept donations to pay for clothes, it’s understood, following a row over £100,000 worth of freebies given to the Prime Minister.

Deputy PM Angela Rayner and chancellor Rachel Reeves will also not accept such gifts.

Starmer has been criticised for repeatedly accepting gifts including clothes, sunglasses and a personal shopping assistant for his wife from Labour peer and donor Waheed Alli.

The Prime Minister has accepted around £39,000 from Lord Alli and since 2019 the total amount of freebies from all sources has risen to more than £100,000.

These include Taylor Swift tickets and £35,000 worth of football tickets.

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The Prime Minister was offered the gift if he agreed to wear it while facing questions in the Commons.

Starmer’s cabinet has so far defended the PM with Jess Phillips saying he “lived entirely by the rules”.

“We get invited to theatre performances and things, and you go along and you support the arts, and people want you to go to their things because they want it supported,” the Home Office minister said.

“So if you can find me a politician who has never done anything like that, has never ever, you know, gone to their local theatre to watch something then, well, I think they’re lying to you.”

Starmer, who is an avid Arsenal fan, also defended himself, saying free football tickets save the taxpayer money on security.

He said: “Frankly, I’d rather be in the stands but I’m not going to ask the taxpayer to indulge me to be in the stands when I could go and sit somewhere else where the club and the security say it’s safer for me to be.

“That is for me a commonsense situation.”

He added: “Once these things are explained, which is the whole point of the rules and declarations, I think most people would say well, that’s a perfectly sensible arrangement.”

Starmer is far from the only MP to have received freebies over the past year, with more than 70 current MPs from across the political spectrum listing free tickets to sporting events in their registers of interest.

Tickets have been provided by private donors, corporations, football clubs or sports governing bodies, among others.