Several people in the BBC Question Time audience last night robustly defended the Labour government as the row over Keir Starmer’s freebies continues.
The prime minister is facing ongoing backlash after it was revealed that he had declared more than £100,000 in gifts from Labour donors, including tickets to see Taylor Swift and free accommodation in Covent Garden.
While critics claim this saga goes against Starmer’s vow to be a government of change after 14 years of Tory scandals, one audience member wrote it off as a “non-story”.
“This is such a non-story if I’m honest with you,” the man said. “You talk about how Keir Starmer is the problem and everything like that, but we’ve had 14 years of Tory sleaze.
“I’m not saying everything is perfect and all, but there are more important things to go on about.
“If we’re talking about Tory sleaze, you’ve got Boris Johnson, you’ve got even one of your panellists, there was a scandal going on with them.”
Former Tory MP Nadhim Zahawi had to leave government after an inquiry found that HMRC was investigating his tax affairs, something he failed to reveal to parliament while he was the Tory chairman.
Zahawi initially dismissed reports around the incident, but he later admitted it was a “careless mistake” and said he ended up paying nearly £5m to HMRC to resolve the incident.
Meanwhile, former PM Boris Johnson famously took an estimated £200,000 from a donor to refurbish his Downing Street flat, which he paid back after the backlash.
Speaking from the BBC Question Time panel, Zahawi just said: “You have to own your mistakes, there are no superheroes in politics.”
Another person from the audience also defended Labour’s first few months in power, saying: “I don’t believe Labour has actually had a honeymoon, they had to hit the road straight away.
“I believe they’ve got a hard struggle ahead and we need to give them a chance.”
And another man blamed any early difficulties on the legacy left behind by the Tories.
He said: “The biggest issue is we’ve had 14 years of a government that basically failed to invest in the infrastructure, let the infrastructure go that a Labour government had built to a point where we had an incredible NHS, we had credible schools etc, and we’ve seen every single piece of our government fail over the last 14 years.
“We need to give this government a chance, they’ve been in 11 weeks, and we need to allow them to make the changes, to turn this oil tanker around because it’s going to take a number of years to get this right.
“If they don’t do it, they won’t be in power in five years’ time.”
Even paymaster general Nick Thomas-Symonds looked surprised at the strength of that defence.
But, not everyone in the audience was so forgiving.
Others slammed Downing Street’s decision to restrict the winter fuel payments – worth up to £300 – to only those on pension credit, calling it “mean and miserable” and warning “Labour have shot themselves in the foot”.
Thomas-Symonds defended the difficult decisions his government has made by referring to the £22bn black hole Labour claims the Tories left behind.
He also dismissed comparisons to the last Conservative government, saying: “Planning reform, foundation of GB Energy, railway nationalisation, national wealth fund – these are things the last Conservative government never would have done.
“These are the things we’ve done in 11 weeks. It’s frankly more than they’ve done in the 11 years before.”
He added that the government is being clear about the scale of the challenge, adding: “Judge us on delivery.”