What is Keir Starmer wearing, how much is it worth and who paid for it? That’s normally a question only asked of female politicians, or prime ministers’ wives, but thanks to the Labour leader’s love of a freebie, his own fashion choices are going to be one of the hot topics at Labour Party conference. Unlike the scrutiny of women’s clothes, though, which normally leads Reiss to sell out of whichever dress turned up on the conference stage that week, Starmer’s outfits are causing a rush to judgement, not a rush to the tills.
One of the opening questions from interviewers will surely be ‘where is your suit from and who paid for it?’
Every day of the Labour meeting in Liverpool, one of the opening questions from interviewers will surely be ‘where is your suit from and who paid for it?’ Downing Street’s decision yesterday to say that Starmer and other senior ministers including deputy prime minister Angela Rayner will not accept any more clothing donations won’t draw a line under the matter because it just raises more questions. The key one is if you’re not accepting donations any more, does that mean it was wrong to accept them before? And if it was wrong to accept them before, will you either be handing the (multiple pairs of) glasses and suits back, or paying back their value? And will you keep wearing them, or will they gather dust in your wardrobe?
Katy Balls writes here about the impact of the dysfunction in Downing Street on the wider impression that Starmer is in control. He might be determined to clamp down on the persistent briefing against his Downing Street chief of staff Sue Gray, but that is extremely difficult given she has managed to annoy almost every single Labour special adviser in Whitehall.
Starmer doesn’t help himself, either. His ‘I’m completely in control’ line this week was the sort of thing that no leader who is actually in control needs to state, but what followed it was weaker: the Prime Minister burbled on about creating a ‘national wealth fund’ and putting in place ‘housing frameworks’, neither of which have any real tangible meaning to voters listening. If those are the first two things he can think of when he is reaching for examples of the way the Labour government is getting on with the job of changing lives, no wonder his suits are under such scrutiny.
A lot can happen at conference (just ask Liz Truss), both for good and bad. It is the political equivalent of a cross country race, with top performers slipping over in the mud and unexpected twists and turns. It might be that Labour has a week in Liverpool that does show why it is in government and how full of purpose (one of Starmer’s own favourite words) it is. But it hasn’t started on the right foot – even if on that foot is a very expensive shoe.
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