Labour's freebie bonanza threatens to ruin the party for everyone

Like most journalists of a certain age, I’ve enjoyed a fair bit of corporate entertainment in my time. Lunches at Claridge’s, days at the races, tickets to Glastonbury, Shakespeare’s Stratford, the Rolling Stones. There was even a pre-crash, pre-Bribery Act weekend in the Dolomites. Hey, I worked in the trade press and having good – some might say cosy – relationships with the firms I reported on was all part of the job.

Did it influence my reporting? I’d be a fool if I said not at all. Who isn’t going to call the person they know they get on with when they need a quick quote for a story?

But it wasn’t really the positive spins or colour writes that the relationship-building proved useful for. Rather, it was when it came to reporting on the negative stuff that the leisurely lunches and nights spent in karaoke bars showed their worth.

Like the time when the huge international law firm I was responsible for covering had a major crisis on its hands. As we'd shared some drinks and a bit of informal chat, the bosses there felt comfortable enough to tell me the unpublishable stuff, which informed what I was then able to write. I got a better than no-comment story and they felt they had been fairly dealt with. 

Relationships matter, you see, and while it is possible to form them across a boardroom table, a little bit of informality – of being yourself – makes for better bonds. As Tory MSP Finlay Carson says in an interview in this magazine, hanging out with fellow members of a cross-party committee on a work trip away made dealing with the formal side of things back in parliament that little bit easier. 

Which is why the row over Labour politicians going on jollies is, to some extent, overblown. Of course, the people running our country should have good working relationships with everyone from business leaders to community groups. If that involves eating some fancy dinners or scoring good seats at a football match or two, if it’s within the democratically agreed rules then so be it.

The problem is that Labour under Keir Starmer has made such a show of its piety, of how it will always deal with people fairly and do the right thing by the public, that evidence of its own largesse is a little hard to swallow.

Yes, politicians are entitled to accept invitations to expensive gigs, but when they’re sticking steadfastly to their decision to take winter-fuel payments off pensioners are they really wise to? Yes, the prime minister made a good point when he said his state-school educated son needed peace to study away from the media glare, but when his policies are forcing parents to pay much higher fees for private education, did he really need to take a £20,000 gift to enable him to do so?

Free clothes and glasses might have made the prime minister look good, but at a time when the government is cracking down on public expenditure and warning of tougher times to come, allowing itself to become known as the party that likes to party really isn’t a good look. 

A simple way of dealing with all of this would be to change the rules, to overhaul the Ministerial Code to say no freebie is a good freebie and all meetings should be formal ones. It wouldn’t necessarily be a positive move, though. Like journalism, politics is all about people and the relationships between them. Restricting the circumstances in which those relationships are built would undoubtedly have a stifling effect. 

But at this moment in time the argument put forward by culture secretary Lisa Nandy that “all MPs take gifts and donations in kind” hardly seems a satisfactory one. As Susan Hawley of the charity Spotlight on Corruption says, if everyone is going to have to make sacrifices “it does not look right if politicians making some of the decisions are having nice freebies”.

Rules or no rules, Labour needs to tread carefully before it ends up ruining the party for everyone.