Rachel Reeves was put in the hot seat repeatedly this morning over the row about senior Labour figures accepting freebies from party donors.
The chancellor, PM Keir Starmer and deputy PM Angela Rayner have all faced intense backlash for accepting thousands of pounds worth of free clothes, tickets to concerts or football matches and, in Rayner’s case, free accommodation in a New York flat.
While all three have now ruled out taking any more free clothing, the accusations over “sleaze” within Labour continue.
It also comes after ministers have spent weeks of telling the public how they would have to tighten their belts to fill the £22bn black hole in the government finances left by the Tories.
On Monday at the Labour conference in Liverpool, Times Radio’s Stig Abell asked the chancellor: “Did it feel odd to have someone buy your clothes?”
Reeves replied: “Juliet [Rosenfeld] and me have been friends for a long time, and she said to me about a year and a half ago, I want to help you in the election campaign, and the thing I would really like to do is for big events and the campaign trail, make sure you’re well turned out.”
But she added: “It’s not something that I’m going to do in government.”
“Were you always going to stop in government?” Abell pushed.
“Yes, this is something that we did to get ready for the election campaign,” she added: “I can understand that to a lot of people it looks a bit odd.”
Questioned over new reports that Rayner even has a “private photographer”, Reeves said: “Wait a second – all government departments under all governments have press officers and communications.”
“She’s the first deputy prime minister’s who has had this,” Abell cut in.
As the two tried to interrupt each other, Abell said: “You pitch yourself as the change government, and you come into power, sleaze scandal immediately, there’s a personal photographer following the deputy prime minister.
“Do you not see that it looks to some people like all politicians are the same?
“That people you said ‘we’re different’ to, yet 80 days in, and you’re the same as that.”
Reeves deflected by talking about appointing a new Covid corruption commissioner to recoup the money lost during the pandemic in government contracts.
But Abell hit back: “Do you need a clothing corruption commissioner?”
The chancellor said the important thing is “being transparent”, so the radio host said: “So no more clothes for anyone in government?”
“No and we’ve said that. It helped us during opposition and the election campaign,” Reeves replied.
Abell asked again: “No more tickets for Taylor Swift?”
“As long as those things are declared properly so people can see there’s no conflict of interest, I think it’s fine to go to the football and go to a pop concert. I don’t begrudge people doing that,” the senior minister said.
“But we’ve got to do things transparently and have all the information in the public domain.”
She added that the main way to tackle the “cynicism” she knows exists around government today is to “deliver the change that people voted for Labour to deliver”.
Reeves was similarly pressed on ITV’s Good Morning Britain for being too similar to the Tories.
Host Susanna Reid asked what is the difference between Boris Johnson –who was often slammed by Labour for taking donors’ money to refurbish his Downing Street flat – and Labour MPs asking donors to pay for holidays and clothes.
Reeves said Johnson’s wallpapergate was about “transparency”.
But Reid hit back: “The point is that the hypocrisy is now. What Labour voters can’t understand is if you said to the Tories it’s not OK to take donations for personal benefit, why is it different if you’re a Labour MP?”
Reeves said: “I think the point that I’m making is that now that I’m in government we will be doing things differently.”