Perhaps we should cut Sir Keir Starmer some slack over his scorched earth approach to leadership. The new Prime Minister has been hoovering up gifts and hospitality like a wild-eyed contestant on Supermarket Sweep. No trinket has been deemed too small to deserve his consideration; no folderol too trivial. I’m reminded of a Robert Herrick poem, written in 1648, which has inspired generations of capitalists and robber-barons.

Gather ye Rose-buds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying: And this same flower that smiles today, Tomorrow will be dying.

Sir Keir has adopted an admirable leading-from-the front strategy to accepting the fringe dividends that come with high office. Since becoming leader of the UK Labour Party, he has accepted two and a half-times more handouts than any other of his elected colleagues.

Isn’t it good to know that while Sir Keir is a millionaire many times over, he’s also fond of those little unearned assets that drop into your lap from time to time to ease your route through life’s turbid waters?

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His father (a tool-maker, don’t you know) would have been proud that his son has used all the implements at his disposal to fashion something good for himself. It’s just his way of saying: “Look, I may be very rich and very powerful but I’m really just like the rest of you.”

Sir Keir (annual salary: £167k) has augmented this footling quantum with more than £100k of benefits since he became Labour leader. This includes £12,588 worth of tickets to see his favourite football club, Arsenal. The London giants have also offered him free use of one of their corporate boxes which normally go for around £8k per match. He got four Taylor Swift concert tickets worth four grand and tickets for the European Championships in France this summer.

Obviously, the onerous duties of running the country – or being married to the chap who runs the country – leaves little time to attend to those humdrum chores the rest of us take for granted. Luckily, the multi-millionaire Labour donor, Lord Alli has been on hand to act as a personal shopper for Sir and Lady Keir and told the busy couple not to fuss over the £39,122 bill. After all, what’s a few dozen grand between multi-millionaire friends?

This being modern Britain, where we can’t see green cheese go past us, some wretched curmudgeons have expressed anger that the Starmers are going all Imelda Marcos with their personal habiliments. After all, Sir Keir has told Britain’s codgers they won’t be getting their winter fuel payments this year and has maintained the Tories’ callous two-child benefit cap.

I feel though, that the narrative around this has been deliberately distorted to make it look as though Sir Keir is a blagging hypocritical hustler who has pulled off one of the greatest confidence tricks in UK electoral history. Can’t we all be a little more nuanced and sophisticated when interpreting his behaviours?

There are as yet unacknowledged dividends of snatching away those winter fuel payments. It just means that the crusties will have to consider more layers of outerwear when they retire for the night and perhaps invest in traditional foundation garments like long-johns and lacy, flannelled goonies for the ladies.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria StarmerLabour leader Sir Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria Starmer (Image: Stefan Rousseau)

This could provide a handy windfall for the UK’s hard-pressed clothing sector. In some of our remote, rural and island fastnesses the winds can whip in and blow the haw-maws off a charging Holstein at 50 metres. Yet, if the islanders and Highlanders all showed the right attitude the loss of the winter fuel allowance could provide opportunities to revive those long-neglected cottage industries that fashioned good, sturdy clothes and bed linen out of sheep carcasses and discarded fishing nets.

The menfolk could be encouraged to grow their beards long over the winter. And then, when the spring comes round again and it’s time to trim them, the womenfolk could gather up all the facial hair and make chunky sweaters from them for the next winter. It’s sustainable, environmental and environmentally sustainable.

And instead of having a ceilidh once a week: why not have them two or three times a week? And couldn’t they get the musicians to play their reels a bit faster? This would provide another cheap way of warming up. Look again at those faces peering out at us from St Kilda 100 years ago. They’re all wrapped up warm and giving not one single friar tuck about the elements swirling about them. And yes I know they all look grim and wizened, but that was just the style back then. None of them look like they’re suffering from mental health problems.

That’s because their staple diet of baby gannets provides everything the body needs to get through a harsh winter. What’s more, local oral histories have indicated that some of them lived until they were about 180. They’d have been personally affronted by the thought of a winter fuel allowance. My old colleague, Torcuil Crichton the new Labour MP for Na h-Eileanan an lar, knows all about this stuff.

Ian Murray, the member for Morningside and new Scottish Secretary, could help out here. He could adjure his well-heeled constituents to place orders in the back-to-basics rural economy for their artisan coffee emporiums, travel bookshops and pre-loved clothing boutiques. Make Poverty Pay!

Like all those other Labour hopefuls I encountered on the General Election campaign trail they were both quick to condemn the inhumane policies of the Tories and how they’d pursued a one-sided austerity programme that disproportionately hit the poor.

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I feel though, we shouldn’t judge them so harshly for then choosing to embrace those same policies and meekly accepting their millionaire chief’s austere diktats. Many of them have worked too hard and sacrificed too much to be side-tracked by mere principles.

I feel this has been a watershed month in British politics. It’s obvious that the UK Labour Party has chosen to forsake division and tribal enmity by embracing the philosophy of the Tories. In Scotland meanwhile, the SNP have unofficially ceased operations.

Their leader, John Swinney has brought the curtain down on the independence era. The country’s not ready for it, he said yesterday. His MSPs have all voted against pursuing the only route left to achieving it. All the big parties north and south of the Border are now in perfect alignment: Gather ye Rosebuds while ye may.

In the long run, it won’t really matter anyway. As Westminster and Holyrood unite to pass their Assisted Dying legislation the new progressive era of Survival of the Fittest will soon sort out the wheat from the chaff. Huzzah!

Kevin McKenna is a freelance journalist and former deputy editor of The Herald