UK PM Starmer to repay over S$10,000 worth of gifts, including 6 Taylor Swift concert tickets

United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer has repaid £6,000 (S$10,254) worth of gifts and hospitality.

Starmer is under fire for accepting gifts and other freebies for himself and his family from a well-to-do party donor; but also while his government limits or cuts benefits for the needy.

Thousands of pounds worth of gifts

Starmer is the leader of the UK’s governing Labour Party.

Labour won the July 2024 general election, ousting the Conservative Party after 14 years.

Before that, Starmer was the Leader of the Opposition for four years.

In September 2024 it was revealed that Starmer and his wife had received thousands of pounds worth of gifts, most notably from major party donor, Waheed Ali.

Sky News reported on Sep. 18, just after the story broke, that Starmer had received £107,145 (S$182,864) worth of gifts and hospitality, a sum that has increased since then.

The Guardian reported on Oct. 2 that this included £34,000 (S$58,028) worth of workwear, and several pairs of glasses worth about £2,400 (S$4,097), as well as tickets for concerts and football matches.

Gift declaration

British MPs are allowed to accept gifts from private donors, but are required to declare the gifts within 28 days.

The BBC reported on Sep. 15 that Starmer had admitted failing to declare some of these gifts, such as clothes bought for his wife by Alli.

These revelations came after it was revealed in August that Alli had been given a security pass by Starmer to his offices at 10 Down Street.

Alli, a millionaire businessman, is a Labour peer. This means that he represents the party in the upper house of parliament, the House of Lords, after having been made a lord in 1998 by then-PM Tony Blair.

Taylor Swift and Arsenal tickets

On Oct. 2 the Guardian reported that Starmer had returned £6,000 (S$10,240) worth of gifts.

This included four tickets to Taylor Swift’s concert in London, believed to be used by Starmer, his wife, and his two children, said to be worth £2,800 (S$4,779); and four tickets to a horse racing event, worth £1,939 (S$3,309).

‘Swift’ campaign pitstop. pic.twitter.com/VdSo7Pb0i5

— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) June 21, 2024

He also paid back £598 (S$1,020) for two additional Taylor Swift tickets.

Starmer said that he would not repay tickets for football matches he attended in September and August by Tottenham Hotspur, valued at £920 (S$1,570) , or Arsenal, valued at £1,000 (S$1,706).

Starmer has been a childhood fan of Arsenal and has owned a season ticket for the club dating back to long before he entered politics.

He defended accepting the tickets as, due to his role as PM, he could no longer use his season ticket seats due to security reasons.

The football clubs had offered him a seat in their director’s box instead.

Seats in the director’s box are generally not openly sold, making their precise value difficult to ascertain.

Examination pressures

One additional incident that Starmer has defended is the use of Ali’s £18 million penthouse.

The penthouse has been used by Starmer and the Labour Party on numerous occasions, including when Starmer shot a video during the Covid pandemic urging citizens to stay home.

But he also defended his use of the penthouse in May and June 2024, saying that the general election, which had been called by the then governing Conservative Party without warning, coincided with his child’s GCSE examinations.

The GCSE is equivalent to Singapore’s O-Levels.

Starmer said that with the election campaign in full swing, his child was distracted from his studies by journalists and protesters camped outside his home.

The Guardian quotes him as saying that when he was offered the penthouse to allow his son to concentrate, he said “any parent would have made the decision”.

He was not going to let his child “fail or not do well” in his exams because he was contesting the election.

Benefits gained and benefits cut

The row is taking place parallel to a debate about budget austerity, introduced by their rival, the Conservative Party, but continued by Labour.

Labour has continued with the Two Child Benefit Cap, which limits how much government aid families with more than two children can receive.

It has also cut the Winter Fuel Allowance, a heating fuel subsidy given to all elderly citizens.

The UK government has announced that it will cut the allowance for all but the country’s poorest citizens.

This decision has been met with anger by members of his own party and one MP even quit the party, citing the scandal as one of her reasons.

Politico reports that MP Rosie Duffield quit the party issuing a scathing assessment of Starmer’s government, which she said had become about “greed and power”, criticising him for accepting “lavish gifts” while cutting fuel subsidies for over ten million people.

Starmer's government has announced that it will introduce measures to tighten transparency rules for ministerial hospitality, as reported by the BBC.

Related stories

Top image via Keir Starmer/X