Kay Burley put a top Tory in the hot seat on Tuesday morning by calling out his own party’s lack of transparency when it comes to gifts from donors.
The Mirror reported that Tory leadership candidate James Cleverly took his wife Susannah to a Wimbledon match and to the Women’s World Cup final in Sydney using tickets donated to the party last year.
But, according to the newspaper, he did not initially declare her attendance at either event in parliament’s register of MPs’ interests.
A spokesperson for Cleverly said this must have been a “mistake” and they have asked for it to be rectified.
But, the incident is a blow to his leadership campaign, considering the Tories have been hammering Labour after PM Keir Starmer declared more than £100,000 worth of free gifts and accommodation from Labour donors.
So Sky News’ Kay Burley put it to shadow minister Damian Hinds that Cleverly “seems to have blown himself up” in the leadership race “by not declaring his wife at sporting events”.
She added: “What’s he doing?”
Hinds said, “I’ve just seen that story in the Mirror, I don’t know,” before trying to deflect and talk about the wider Tory leadership contest.
Burley cut in: “It’s fairly obvious she’s there though. She’s there at Sydney, the one before was at Wimbledon.”
Hinds stuttered: “I, I – genuinely can’t look at a photo live on your brilliant programme and be able to tell you things –”
As he laughed awkwardly, Burley interrupted again: “Why not? I can tell you he was at Wimbledon and I can you he was the women’s world cup final in Sydney.
“He’s now declared it but only when people said, ‘Oh, I wonder what that is?’”
“I can’t answer that, that’s my honest response,” Hinds replied.
“Can we agree it’s not smart?” The presenter asked, to which Hinds said: “I think all politicians have to take responsibility for what they do.”
Hinds tried to deflect again back onto Labour, saying there was clearly a “particular problem” around No.10.
But Burley hit back: “That’s because they’re transparent and when you guys were in power, you weren’t, is what the government says now.”
“Not even they say that,” he said – although science secretary Peter Kyle said it just two days ago.
These revelation about Cleverly follow a pretty successful Tory conference for the shadow home secretary.
He was widely seen as the frontrunner after his popular speech to the party faithful, where he told them: “We win back voters by being honest, by being professional, by being conservative.”
Tory MPs will vote twice this week to knock out two of the four remaining leadership candidates – Cleverly, Robert Jenrick, Kemi Badenoch and Tom Tugendhat – while the party members will chose between the final pair in November.