Starmer freebies row is not about corruption – it’s about class

One moment at Labour conference stuck in my mind, and it wasn’t a big set piece address or a particularly hard-hitting interview.

It was a fleeting, behind the scenes exchange with the prime minister’s spokespeople who were briefing the press after his speech.

Having just heard him, once again, talk about his humble beginnings, I asked them: “Does Keir Starmer still consider himself working class?”

The pair looked at each other. One replied: “He’s from a working class background.”

I tried again:”… and is he still working class?”

The other spokesperson responded this time: “He represents working class people.”

“And is he one of them?” I asked. To that, there was no answer and we moved on.

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It seems trivial but, on reflection, it gets to the heart of why the story about donations and gifts resonates and won’t go away.

It isn’t, as so many journalists are willing it to be, about corruption or cover-up.

The prime minister’s biographer Tom Baldwin put this best when he said reading through the register of interests is hardly Watergate.

Political opponents trying to seize the advantage say “it’s bad optics” and “it doesn’t pass the sniff test” – convenient Westminster phrases to mask the lack of any real substance.

But what is significant in politics is the picture you paint of yourself and whether it matches up to who you really are – the authenticity test.

During the election campaign, Sir Keir made a virtue of his ordinariness and this has continued into government.

He sold the public the dream of a prime minister, not from Eton and Oxbridge, but a pebble-dashed semi, the son of a toolmaker, who was one of them.

In his conference speech he did it again, referencing “people of a completely ordinary working-class background like mine”.

His deputy, Angela Rayner, did the same, describing being a single mum working nights as a home help, saying: “[It was] tough at times. I started on casual terms, and I wasn’t paid for travel. Insecurity at work is the daily reality for so many.”

The fact that they now take a bit of free stuff is not the issue. As one (fellow northern, state school educated) colleague said to me: “There’s nothing more working class than liking freebies.”

It’s that their struggle is now a distant memory, fodder for worthy anecdotes in conference speeches.

But more than that, when you look at the detail, you see they are living a life of privilege – free clothes, free tickets, parties paid for, the use of million-pound properties whenever they need them.

They may have started off trying to make ends meet, but now whatever they want is at their fingertips and they are making the most of it.

Voters, promised one of their own in Number 10, see someone whose life could not be further from theirs and it’s jarring.

Using your background as political currency doesn’t work anymore when you have so definitively left it behind.

If even Sir Keir Starmer’s own team can see that, the public can too.