Does Britain’s Labour have a corruption problem?
It’s hard to get a room in New York City for less than $500 a night. Unless you’re an illegal immigrant. Then, a discreet network of NGOs will whisk you across the country, all expenses paid, and New York’s Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) will accommodate you for free. Otherwise, it’s Airbnb and bedbugs for all. So hats off to Angela Rayner, Britain’s deputy prime minister, for snagging a four-night, five-day stay over last New Year’s in a two-bed, 1,300-square-foot apartment in Midtown with a roof deck, courtyard, fitness suite, and, the building’s website says, “incredible views” over the Hudson River and New Jersey for only £250, or $335, a night.
Even more incredibly, Rayner got it for free. The apartment belongs to Labour Party donor Waheed Alli. That’s Lord Alli to you. In 1998, then-Prime Minister Tony Blair made Alli, a Labour-donating media and fashion mogul, the youngest peer in the history of the House of Lords. Alli’s personal fortune is estimated at £200 million, or $268 million. In the unlikely event of finding himself strapped for cash, he could Airbnb his New York City pad for around $2,500 a night. Rayner valued her freebie at about a tenth of its market value. She claims this was Lord Alli’s estimate.
Rayner certainly figures highly in Alli’s estimation. He has donated £50,000 to her over the last four years. He has also donated lavishly to the entire Labour leadership. Of that, £39,122 has gone to new Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer for personal accommodation, office costs, suits, and designer glasses, not forgetting a personal shopper and designer clothes for Starmer’s wife, Victoria. Starmer was so busy polishing his spectacles that he forgot to declare Victoria’s secret, even though Lord Alli was his chief campaign fundraiser at the time.
The U.S. first lady’s clothing budget is $50,000. Unlike Victoria Starmer, who works in healthcare, the first lady does not receive a salary. She can accept clothes as gifts on behalf of the U.S. government, but otherwise, she pays her own way. In France, madame la présidente also has no state funding for her wardrobe. Brigitte Macron scrapes by on donations and loans from houses such as Louis Vuitton. Her office, a 2019 biography reports, carefully records which is which. German ministers seem not to have any clothing budgets, though their spending of taxpayers’ euros on hairdressers, makeup artists, and photographers caused a minor scandal in 2023.
All governments end with corruption scandals. This Labour government is beginning with them. The scandals began before Labour took office. Keir Starmer won last July’s general elections with a promise to clean up the accumulated sleaze and “cronyism” of the Conservatives’ 14-year run. No one can explain how Lord Alli was recently granted a high-security pass to 10 Downing Street or why he was allegedly throwing a party in the prime ministerial garden.
The Labour leadership had its hands out and its trotters in the trough while still in Opposition. In 2023, Starmer declared an income of £404,030, or $540,000. Even with the eye-watering cost of London living, that should cover suits and glasses. Since December 2019, Starmer, as leader of the Opposition, accepted more gifts than any other MP. “Free Gear Kier” accepted soccer tickets worth about £40,000, or $53,000, when the government was looking at establishing a soccer regulatory body, and gifts worth £12,588, or $16,843, from the Premier League, which opposes creating the regulator.
When they’re caught — I mean, questioned — British politicians plead that even the most prestigious public sector salaries pay poorly in comparison to equivalent jobs in the private sector. This is true of politicians across the West, though it ignores the post-politics opportunities for cashing out. Americans tolerate this deferred payoff. Europeans still dislike it. The British, hypocritical as usual, fall somewhere in between. Starmer, Rayner, and co. insist they followed the letter of the law. But it’s the spirit of the law, and the ethics of public service, that they’ve broken.
The problem, everywhere, is that so long as politics is expensive for politicians, and so long as lobbying and “gifts” are allowed, the job will attract the wrong kind of people: mediocrities who can’t compete in the private sector, chancers who can’t wait to sell out, and rich dabblers who can’t be bothered to work.
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One alternative, deployed in Singapore by Lee Kuan Yew, is to pay politicians the market rate and then come down hard if they get caught putting out their hand. As Singapore’s transport minister, Subramaniam Iswaran received a $1 million salary. He has just been convicted of accepting Starmer-style gifts including hotels and concert tickets. This nice ‘n’ nasty approach seems preferable to the typical Western arrangement, in which high status and a small salary incentivize freeloading. But Western voters would reject raising their representatives’ salaries as little more than institutionalized freeloading. And let’s face it, that’s what it would be, given the moral vacuum of modern politics.
The other alternative is to revive the spirit of selfless public service. As Angela Rayner no doubt reflected as she pondered the incredible views of New Jersey, Lord Alli is a splendid exemplar in this regard.