It’s the story that won’t stop – donorgate.
Yesterday we discussed the fact that Starmer’s dates didn’t make sense after he tried to throw his son under the bus by suggesting that Lord Alli’s £18 million apartment was used for his son to study for his GCSEs.
We also discussed the fact that the apartment was used for Starmer’s Covid broadcast, when it was decked out to look like his own home. However since then, more developments have emerged.
The Guardian reported on the story after having been briefed by number 10 that it understood the flat was used for the Covid broadcast as a one-off.
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37 minutes later, the Guido Fawkes newsite revealed he had also used the “one-off” apartment for his broadcast tribute to the late Queen Elizabeth II. This use of the apartment does not appear in the registry of interests.
It is intriguing to try to speculate what was wrong with the Reverend Starmer’s own home for these broadcasts. Perhaps like Ed Miliband, he has two kitchens or some other embarrassing luxury.
And now it emerges Lord Alli, owner of the apartment that was allegedly only used once, also lent the same flat to Wes Streeting for another Labour Party happening. Does this poor man ever get to sleep in his own flat?
He also lent Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh £1.2 million to buy a house for her terminally ill sister.
So, the real question is, what does Lord Alli want?
The nature of these donations are distinctly personal. As I have disclosed before, any donation I received were for the Conservative Party, none was for me personally nor did I take freebies.
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But Lord Alli’s donations are deeply personal, and cover apartments, loans for houses, frocks, spectacles and even a holiday let.
The only real explanation is that the Labour peer is seeking to buy a cohort of people over whom he hopes to exert influence. If he just wanted to support the party, he could have donated to the party as a whole or to individual associations.
But he chose to use his cash to build close relationships with the most powerful people in the country – as Stephen Glover said brilliantly in today’s Daily Mail, “He’s not distributing freebies to ordinary folk on the Clapham omnibus.”
So what do we know about him? Well, not only does he not talk to the media, we know he doesn’t like the media very much at all.
When asked questions at the Labour conference about the scandal, all he said was “please don’t – this is not very nice”.
In 2013, the reticent Lord made a speech calling for a new offence to deal with press intimidation as well as a press regulator. He went on to criticise Blair for his close relationship with the tabloids.
But if we have learned anything from Huw Edwards or Mohammed Al-Fayed, it is that our media laws already work in favour of the rich and powerful far too much.
We have oppressive libel, privacy and contempt of court laws already, and people such as Lord Alli appear to want to crack down on the free press even more.
The question is, will Lord Alli use the undeniable influence he now has over the government to pursue his anti-free speech agenda? Only time will tell.
But any movement towards press regulation from this government must be treated as highly suspicious.