Labour have easily outdone Tories for cronyism and freebies in 3 months – what the hell were we all thinking on July 4?

SO, now we know.

The Prime Minister got a private ten-minute audience with the caterwauling American moppet Taylor Swift.

It was at the last of her recent concerts at Wembley Stadium, for which Sir Keir Starmer received free tickets.

Slowly it is all beginning to emerge. It hadn’t been clear previously as to whether or not Starmer was snuck backstage. With his merch ready to be autographed, I s’pose.

We still don’t know if the PM tried to charm Taylor.

Perhaps by outlining his plans to set up an exciting state-owned facilitating body called British Energy which would invest in the harvesting of unicorn tears.

That would have grabbed her attention. She will have been all aquiver.

However, we do know that top Labour politicians and the PM’s then Chief of Staff Sue Gray lobbied the Metropolitan Police in order that taxpayers’ money should be spent on a “VVIP” escort for Swift when she arrived in London.

That kind of thing is usually reserved for members of the Royal Family and Third World dictators.

But having threatened to pull out of her tour if she wasn’t treated in the manner to which she felt accustomed, the Government went to work on her behalf.

And, hey presto, suddenly Sir Keir got his tickets. And indeed ten senior Labour MPs were handed freebies for the gig. Quite why they wanted to go is beyond my imagination. But there’s no accounting for taste, is there?

This is the dimmest Cabinet on record so I suppose it is to be expected.

Whatever way you look at it, though, this is corruption.

OK, it’s not the kind of Russki oligarch-level corruption. It’s low-level corruption, but corruption all the same.

Starmer knows it was wrong because he has paid back the cost of the ­tickets.

Surreptitious trousering

Along with another few thousand quids’ worth of freebies he got, such as tickets to football matches.

He has always insisted that there have been no quid pro quos.

But then we learned that Labour donor Lord Alli had bunged Starmer loads of freebies — such as clothes, spectacles and the loan of a very expensive apartment.

And we also learned that Lord Alli had been given a role which allowed him the free run of No10 Downing Street.

Just a coincidence, then, huh? Do you really expect anybody to believe that? Now we learned what ­Labour is up to with the civil service.

Since Starmer took office he has appointed 200 cronies to influential positions within the civil service.

That’s two per day for every day he has been in office.

These people were all appointed without the usual civil service interview procedures. Just a case of — yeah, you vote the right way.

Come and help us destroy the British economy on a humongous wage. You just look at the evidence. A row over cronyism in his first weeks in office and then these ludicrous appointments at your expense.

In other words, bunging important jobs to mates.

And then the surreptitious trousering of freebies and dosh.

If you remember, this was one of the big reasons for getting rid of the Tories.

They were seen to be in it for themselves, bunging contracts to mates and partying at our expense.

But Labour has easily outdone them inside just three months.
Someone tell me. What the hell were we all thinking on July 4?

Keep going Kemi . . . don’t let the b’stards get you down

THE knives are out for Kemi Badenoch. Her Conservative colleagues are lining up to cause as much harm to her leadership bid as possible.

That’s because they know that when it comes to a vote by the party activists, Badenoch would win by a mile. And so she should. She would hammer Sir Keir Starmer at the despatch box.

And her views would resonate with an enormous number of voters who deserted the party in July.

Stick at it, Kemi – they know you’re on the home straight.

TALENT IRONIC AT BEEB

THE Director-General of the BBC, Tim Davie, has decided to ban referring to TV presenters as “the talent”.

Because it implies that everybody else working on the programmes therefore isn’t the talent.

I get where he’s coming from, sure. But from my days at the BBC I can assure you the word “talent” was only ever used in a satirical manner.

As in: “Aha! Look out, here comes the talent! The great blockheaded smirking oaf.”

Believe me, nobody who worked with some of the presenters we worked with could use the word talent and keep a straight face.

It was used, interchangeably, with “a***hole” and meant the same thing.