If we want to drive good people out of politics, this is the way to do it.
It is bad enough that protesters can climb on Rishi Sunak’s roof, drape the house in black cloth and walk away from court unpunished. But now Keir Starmer – whose north London home often had so-called protesters outside – is being criticised for trying to allow his son to prepare for his GCSEs in peace.
Yes, I accept that Starmer, as leader of the opposition, made a mistake in allowing Waheed Alli, the Labour peer, to pay for his suits and glasses. He enjoyed a personal benefit that he should not have done. He should also have paid for his own Taylor Swift tickets, supplied by the Football Association, which owns Wembley Stadium.
He has paid a heavy price for those errors, in that he lost the chance to reset the integrity of his government after the failings of the Boris Johnson administration. But we should leave his family alone.
As for Alli, what on earth is he supposed to have done wrong? He was a successful TV entrepreneur who supports the Labour Party and wants it to succeed. Of course, he is different from you and me because he has more money, but the principle of his support for the party is no different from that of any other party member or small donor.
He has a different relationship with ministers and the prime minister because Tony Blair put him in the House of Lords, presumably because he valued his judgement. Of course, Alli’s donations to the party were hardly an obstacle to a peerage, and I am opposed to the House of Lords having any legislative function – but the idea that politicians cannot take advice from outsiders, some of whom may be rich, is not serious.
I do not know Alli, but I know people who speak highly of him, his work in the Lords, his commitment to Labour, and his generosity. One of them is Siobhain McDonagh, the Labour MP for Mitcham and Morden, whose sister Margaret, a former general secretary of the party, was made a peer and was a friend of Alli’s.
He lent Margaret £1.2m so that she could buy a house that would allow her sister to look after her as she was dying of cancer. It was extraordinarily generous. It was declared by Siobhain in the register of interests at the time and went unreported because there was nothing wrong with it.
The loan will be repaid when probate for Margaret, who died in June last year, has been granted. But meanwhile, because Alli has become an excuse for the Conservative press to attack Starmer, it has now been reported as if there were something sinister about it.
The Daily Mail has thrown it in with everything else. Alli was briefly given a pass to 10 Downing Street after the election. He lent Starmer his central London flat, inevitably described as a “penthouse”, so that his son could study in peace. Before then, Starmer used it during the pandemic to record videos. So what? I mean, really: “So what?” to all of it.
Some of the criticisms of Alli, or of Starmer for accepting the offer of a convenient central London flat, are just silly. These are perks that are not available to “normal” people, it is said. But non-politicians don’t have protesters and police camped outside their homes.
That is why I don’t think it is wrong for politicians to stay in rich people’s houses on holiday. Especially if there are children involved, as there were when Tony Blair did it. I don’t see anything wrong with Angela Rayner staying at Alli’s apartment in New York, either – even if the Mail does describe it in breathless estate-agentese as having “breathtaking views of the Empire State Building”, with its own “gym, jacuzzi and pool”.
As long as it is all declared – and another mistake Starmer, Rayner and Rachel Reeves made was the failure to make full and prompt disclosure – then we can all see and marvel at the generosity of Alli.
His motivations are equally transparent. He has no business interests to secure – he made his money long ago. I am sure he wants to be liked and enjoys being a friend and adviser to the powerful, but he mainly wants a sensible, social-democratic Labour Party to win.
The Daily Mail, on the other hand, wants to drive sensible people, especially those with young families, out of politics. We must not let it succeed.
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