Is the media overly obsessed with Labour’s donations?
Is the media overly obsessed with Labour’s donations?
Plus Harry & Meghan's PR fightback over "dictator in high heels" article and 5 big takeaways from the new Prince Andrew/Newsnight drama.
We’re now on what feels like Day 100 of the Labour Party cash for clothes/donorgate/frockgate story.
I’m seeing several vastly different arguments play out on social media regarding this story. Some people feel it’s not a story at all, given all the donations have been declared (albeit late in the case of Victoria Starmer’s clothes) and are within the rules. They blame the right-wing press for inventing the story.
Others are fuming, and say that donations of sporting tickets, concert tickets, clothes, and glasses are inappropriate. They think it shows that all politicians are the same.
Part of the reason the story has been rumbling along for so long is that there are multiple strands to it.
Originally it was over the late declaration of £5,000 worth of clothes given to Lady Starmer. Then this shed a spotlight on the £20,000 of clothes and glasses donated to Keir Starmer. That also led to analysis of his other donations dating back to 2019, which found he had received tens of thousands of pounds worth of freebies including football and concert tickets.
Labour announced it would no longer accept clothing donations, however the story has still trundled on.
Then this week it came out that Starmer had accepted use of accommodation, worth £20,000, which he said was so that his son could study for his GCSEs without disruption at the family home (where photographers were camped out).
The records show the stay took place from May 29 to July 13 - although GCSE exams ran from May 9 to June 19. It’s possible Starmer decided his family should stay on in the more private accommodation for the election campaign, however that explanation hasn’t been put forward as I write this.
Yesterday Starmer was answering questions about the scandal - when he would much rather be talking about his conference speech in which he promised he has a plan for long-term change.
He explained, again, that his reasons for making use of a hospitality box at Arsenal was that sitting in his season ticket seats - which he has paid for himself - would make security extremely challenging. The seats in the ground’s corporate box are not available to purchase to the public. In fairness, it makes sense if he is going to the games that he should accept something that makes it easier for security to do the job without disrupting others at the ground. Some say he just shouldn’t go to football, but surely Starmer still has the right to go out and enjoy himself on occasion?
In terms of other gifts, there’s still some anger from those who don’t think being an MP should mean you get gifted perks such as Taylor Swift VIP seats, or use of a flash apartment in New York.
And the question that looms over any gift is, what do they want in return?
In the case of Lord Alli, Starmer’s biggest donor and the Labour peer behind the clothing donations, one might argue he simply wants a functioning Labour government. His donations have been about supporting the party to get into power.
But for critics there remains a question over how a politician can remain impartial in a relationship after receiving a donation from that individual.
And it’s about the optics. Should public servants be receiving perks?
“My father was a toolmaker” Starmer and his colleagues campaigned on a platform of “change”, where they repeatedly criticised sleaze and donations accepted by Conservatives. Examples include Boris Johnson accepting £20,000 for his wedding and tens of thousands of pounds, that was not appropriately declared, towards renovating the Downing Street flat when he lived there.
Labour has talked about being a government of service and being for the people, not a party of sleaze. That claim clashes somewhat with the donations of luxury accommodation and hospitality.
The Tories perhaps got away lightly by comparison because they had never sought to criticise the other side for accepting donations. Under their leadership it was normalised. Until now of course, with the Tories this week gleefully jumping on board the bandwagon, as evidenced by the below tweet bringing together the £20k accommodation donation and introduction of means testing for the winter fuel allowance.
The Mail added a new thread this week when it reported that Angela Rayner has become the first deputy prime minister to have her own photographer on a salary of £68,000. The paper clumsily tried to tie this all in with damage control efforts around the donors story.
The Prime Minister has had their own photographer - in recent years they have had three - for some years now going back to David Cameron (although his was funded by the Tory party).
It’s difficult gymnastics for the Mail, which is heavily criticising Labour for taking donations and spending money on a personal photographer, when it had little issue with the Conservatives doing the same.
In the modern social media age it’s hard to take much issue with the government having photographers in order to put together material for their social media feeds etc. For me the issue comes when it’s used to close off access to the news media.
When only government-selected images of events, meetings and key moments are released, we miss out on the scrutiny an independent press can provide. And if there are fewer events for news photographers to capture, it means there are fewer jobs for those photojournalists, which I think is a bad thing.
So, has donorgate rumbled along too long, and had more column inches when compared to scrutiny of Tory donations? Has it descended into nit-picking? Probably. It’s been given more oxygen by right leaning press such as the Telegraph, The Times and The Sun than Johnson’s wedding donation, that is certain. I would say though that the Johnson flat decor story did get a lot of coverage, especially because it was tied to a lack of transparency.
It does slightly feel as if the media is now picking apart every donor declaration and presenting it as if they are unravelling the new Watergate or MPs’ expenses scandal. Labour is not seeking to hide these donations, they’re there publicly for anyone to look at.
Is the current donations row a non-story as a whole? No. Even when accepting a donation within the rules and declaring that donation within the rules, you can’t avoid scrutiny over whether that donation in itself should happen just because you’ve positioned yourself as “the good guys”.
The News Agents podcast pondered whether the story has become SO big because Labour have left a news vacuum by talking a lot about challenges the country faces but very little in terms of solutions. Based on lack of specific detail at the conference this week, it looks like we will have to wait until October 30, when the Autumn Statement will be delivered, for those.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this story. Has it gone too far now? Does the media need to move on?
Release the sausages
Meme-creators sprung into action during Keir Starmer’s Labour conference speech when he accidentally said “sausages” instead of “hostages” when calling for the return of hostages held in Gaza.
But the silliest reaction came from the Telegraph, which ran a comment piece claiming the slip was evidence of Starmer’s lack of support for Israel.
Harry & Meghan’s PR fightback over “dictator in high heels” article
People working for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have spoken to Us Weekly about how kind their bosses are following an article that labelled Meghan a “dictator in heels”.
Last week the Hollywood Reporter reported the reason the couple has such a high turnover of staff, with several leaving after months in the job, is that “everyone is terrified of Meghan”.
In response, staffers, current and former, have gone on the record to provide insight into what it’s really like to work for the couple. They describe care packages and gifts, a supportive environment where ideas are celebrated and plans for a karaoke night.
The Us article makes me think of my own past bosses and I cannot decide who was best. The one who used to wield a golf club over his head while striding up and down the rows of computer desks, or the night news editor who would drunkenly call me at 1am demanding I write up a story that definitely wouldn’t make it into the next edition. To be fair, I would prefer either of those to company karaoke.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way. Of course Harry and Meghan, with help and guidance from their communications team, put people forward to make this article happen.
One staffer was quoted as saying: “Harry and Meghan picked the best of the best from every field and watered the seeds for them to flourish.”
I’m not saying those people were forced, just that this is clearly a tactical move to combat the many negative articles written by, largely UK, media over the last few years. It is also entirely possible that the Hollywood Reporter’s article was the result of a tactical move by a disgruntled party.
The Us Weekly article has been used by the Sussexes as a platform to fact check a few claims that have been bugging them. It highlights reasons why certain staffers have left after a short stint of working with them, which I am reading as a clap back against articles that have highlighted their high turnover of staff. It particularly addresses the recent departure of Josh Kettler as Harry’s chief of staff after just three months, with a quote from Kettler saying “they are dedicated and hard working…it was impressive to witness”.
One of the staffers extensively quoted in the Us Weekly article is their current global press secretary, who, unsurprisingly, does her job well by highlighting the “kindness” of her bosses.
The Hollywood Reporter says it spoke to a dozen staff of the Sussexes for its piece. The Us Weekly piece quotes seven, with several named on the record with their quotes.
The tribal nature of royal fandom means that people will put greater stock in the article that fits their preferred narrative when it comes to this story.
The reality could simply be that some staff like working for the Sussexes, and some do not.
Also this week
It feels as if there is a real sea change taking place around smartphones and kids right now, and I am so here for it. This week it’s been reported parents at a primary school in Hertfordshire are asking neighbouring schools to join them in signing a pledge to delay giving kids a smartphone until they finish Year Nine. I get that comparisons can be made between giving kids a smartphone and other historic moral panics among parents - such as video games, heavy metal music and TV. But the more evidence I see about kids and smartphone use, the more I fail to find any convincing argument for allowing them to have one. The negatives far exceed any potential positives, in my view. As the technology has rapidly developed and then been embraced by all ages, we’ve not taken the time to stop and think of the harms smartphones, and access to social media and the wider internet, can bring. Now those conversations are happening, and they’re not easy when we have a generation of kids already embracing the technology so readily. The Guardian spoke to a group of kids who are among the 3% of 12 year olds not to have a smartphone.
Lego is going to scrap business cards for staff made of Lego, because they’ve become expensive collector items.
My 5 takeaways from the new Prince Andrew Newsnight drama
It’s a What I’m Watching special this week as I share my thoughts and the big takeaways I got from the latest dramatisation of the Prince Andrew Newsnight interview.
A Very Royal Scandal is the second dramatic take on the disastrous interview that ended Prince Andrew’s time as a working royal.
The interview was Andrew’s chance to set the record straight on his relationship with the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein. He explained he could not have met Virginia Giuffre because he was at a Pizza Express party in Woking, and that her story didn’t ring true because, at the time she says it happened, he could not sweat.
The three episode drama starring Michael Sheen as Prince Andrew and Ruth Wilson and Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis is available to view on Prime now. I can’t spoil it for you, because you already know the story. Here are some key takeaways.
A more realistic take on Emily Maitlis
Compared to Scoop, where Newsnight presenter Maitlis was played by Gillian Anderson, this felt like a more realistic portrayal.
Ruth Wilson manages to convey Maitlis’s whip-smart, cutthroat and slightly chaotic journalistic style to a T. And the voice is pretty spot on too.
Unlike Scoop, A Very Royal Scandal took the stalker that has plagued Maitlis’ life for years and made this a part of the story. In the show, she reflects on being stalked after Andrew asks if she was ever a victim of abuse.
Andrew IS that rude to staff
You would not expect a show about that Newsnight interview and Andrew’s association with Jeffrey Epstein to be flattering. And this one definitely is not.
What the show seeks to portray, in my view, is that Andrew is a victim of his own arrogance, obnoxiousness and incredibly poor judgement. He doesn’t have any sense of shame that would enable him to be self-reflective of how this disaster came to be.
One recurring theme of the show is that Andrew is not a pleasant boss and is a bit of a buffoon. He tells staff to “fuck off” and has a race with his private secretary, Amanda Thirsk, while calling her “fatty”.
The name-calling may not be accurate - Thirsk is very slim - but her blind loyalty to Andrew, as portrayed in the show, is accurate.
According to reports from former staff, quoted anonymously, Prince Andrew has been known to shout “fuck off” at his staff. In his book Courtiers Valentine Low described the duke as “stunningly rude”. In one incident, Andrew told a courtier to “fuck off out of my office and fuck off out of my life”.
Recollections may vary
The drama has done an incredibly good job of injecting real moments in to the drama, using information the team could gather from people who were there. Emily Maitlis being a key one.
The show is filled with scenes and conversations that really did happen. The secretive meeting ahead of the interview where Newsnight convinced Andrew it was a good idea, and he bizarrely asked if anyone had ever been abused. Andrew’s delight after the interview and his belief it had gone well. The staged pictures of Andrew and Fergie putting together care packages during the pandemic. All true.
However this is a drama, and some people were not on board with providing their side of the story. When it comes to what the prince thought, felt and said to staff, the production team has had to rely on what scant information is known and then filled in the blanks.
The result is too funny to be true lines from the private secretary to the sovereign, Sir Edward Young, such as his reference to the interview being a “clusterfuck worth of the Kardashians”.
The Prime show imagines that Andrew was very unwillingly dragged away from public service, forced to settle the legal case with Virginia Giuffre and even told to pretend he had covid in order to miss a jubilee celebration service.
Much of this rings true, particularly the unwillingness to accept this would be the end of his life as a working royal. Even now, years later, occasional reports suggest Andrew would like to return to the spotlight. Pity the poor royal aide who has to knock back those expectations every time.
Is he guilty?
Actor Michael Sheen said when he approached the role he had to do so with his mind made up as to whether Andrew had done anything wrong or not.
It’s then down to us, the audience, to imagine what Sheen may have been thinking, as refuses to tell in interviews
My personal take, on how the show presents it anyway, is that Andrew is a man who believes he’s done nothing wrong. But that doesn’t mean he has not. It makes no final verdict as to his guilt.
Sheen does well at portraying that sense of arrogant entitlement, and the belief in his own, underwhelming, talents. So confident was he in his own sense of rightness that Andrew actually believed he could defend the indefensible.
While the end of the show sees Andrew in a state of both powerlessness and utter despair, you just cannot feel sorry for him. As he is told by Sir Edward when he asks what will he do now, “you live with the consequences of your actions”.
Although the show poses very relevant questions, the key one being “what if he did nothing wrong?”, you have little sympathy for Andrew.
The association with Jeffrey Epstein was an impossible miscalculation of judgement. And if you consider even for a second that he had once thought that a good idea, then you can well imagine he may have thought other actions were also OK.
Who did it best?
This is the second drama about the interview that we have been gifted with this year. Scoop was Netflix’s take on the debacle, and was produced by Sam McAlister, the fixer who managed to book Andrew onto Newsnight.
The two productions have a lot in common, as you would expect. Both did their own recreation of the big interview and their own versions of key moments, such as the meeting where Andrew was talked into the idea.
I really enjoyed Scoop, as I felt it did a great job of illustrating the highs and lows in journalism of chasing down a story.
But I found A Very Royal Scandal more compelling in terms of the way it analysed the fallout from the interview. It did a lot more embellishing around what could have happened behind the scenes of the royal family after the interview. It was a bit more like The Crown in that respect.
We saw more of Andrew in A Very Royal Scandal, and while this is a drama made without any input from his team, I do think there is authenticity in the behaviour and arrogance portrayed by Sheen.
The extraordinary statements made in the interview, and the catastrophic fallout for Prince Andrew after the event, means this was easy fodder for a drama series.
I’m still surprised we ended up getting two in one year, and that it has happened so soon, because I cannot help but feel that the story is not yet over. There’s a sense of a lack of closure.
Andrew settled the abuse case brought by Giuffre, Epstein is dead and the financier’s former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, is in prison.
But we do not know the full extent of Epstein’s crimes. And Andrew settled on the basis that he accepted no liability. He continues to protest his innocence. As does Maxwell, although she lost an appeal against her convictions.
Will we ever really know the full truth of what happened? Probably not. Does this show provide any answers that you didn't already know. Not really. It’s more of a conversation re-starter, which of course I doubt will be celebrated by Andrew.
But it does provide some insight into the thoughts and feelings of those involved. And that Andrew gave the interview that he gave still remains shocking enough to relive it all over again.