Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, has reclassified a gift from Waheed Alli, the Labour peer. She declared £3,550 in July as a “donation in kind for undertaking parliamentary duties”. On Thursday, she updated the register of MPs’ interests to admit that the donation was of “work clothes”.
There was no good time to come clean, but the day after a Budget that put up bus fares by 50 per cent and taxes by £40bn suggests that the government is oblivious to the risks of “one rule for them, another for the rest of us”. Can Labour have forgotten its attack on Boris Johnson so soon?
If the Budget is going to unravel, it won’t be because there were hidden unfairnesses or because the markets briefly reacted badly. It will be because people see a gap between what politicians say and what they do.
Voters in Scunthorpe who switched at the election from Conservative to Labour told Luke Tryl in a focus group for More in Common that “the way they are balancing things feels sneaky” but “I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt”. They liked the extra spending on the NHS and seemed to reluctantly accept the tax rise, even if “they are taxing you around the back door” and “they’ve just changed the wording to suit themselves, but it’s still a tax”.
But that benefit of the doubt will be eroded by Rayner forgetting to declare some more outfits. The voters are willing to endure some common sacrifice; what they will not tolerate is hypocrisy.
Rayner, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have in effect admitted that they should not have taken personal gifts by saying they will not take any more – and, in Starmer’s case, by repaying the Taylor Swift tickets he received as prime minister.
Rayner’s reclassification of her £3,550 donation draws attention again to Labour’s falling short of its own pious rhetoric in attacking the Tories. Her original declaration not only failed to mention that the gift was of clothes, but claimed that it related to “undertaking parliamentary duties” – whereas we now know that the clothes, donated in June this year, were for the election campaign, when parliament was dissolved.
The prime minister hopes to close down this story by publishing new rules on ministerial gifts and hospitality, possibly next week. But until he and his senior ministers repay all the personal gifts received, in opposition as well as in government, they will continue to leave a bitter aftertaste.
Of course, the issue of gifts is trivial on one level. Everyone knew before the election that Lord Alli had given Starmer suits and glasses, and hardly batted an eyelid. But small things can seem different from the perspective of government. And things that start off small can trip up noble ambitions.
Especially if people think that they can detect a pattern. Starmer said one thing to get elected as Labour leader and something quite different once the votes were counted. Now he is accused of saying one thing to get elected as prime minister, including swearing in blood that he wasn’t going to touch farmers’ inheritance tax relief, and then doing something quite different now that he is in government.
In both cases, excuses are made for him. He had to save the Labour Party by taking it back from the Corbynites who still held sway among the members. Then he had to try to put the country on a better course by winning votes from an electorate that is allergic to taxes.
If that Scunthorpe focus group is any guide, he and Reeves just about managed to achieve the necessary rescue of the public finances, and of the public services, without breaking the elastic of trust.
But the elastic is stretched, and Rayner’s clothes stretch it a little further. It does not help that David Goldstone, the boss of the new Office for Value for Money, will be paid £950 a day.
The rhetoric of a “government of service” put a dangerous strain on the elastic of trust because, like Tony Blair’s “purer than pure”, it set up expectations that were bound to be disappointed that the new government would hold itself to exceptional ethical standards.
One of these days, that elastic is going to go “Ping!”
