What's all the fuss about? Who doesn't love a freebie?

Once that rule has been established, it’s possible to properly discern the motives behind much of the hypocritical cant surrounding the ongoing row about donations to the Labour leader and his wife.

Let me begin by making clear that I don’t think Sir Keir and Lady Victoria Starmer should have accepted gifts of clothes from party donor Lord Alli.

The wealthy TV executive has donated more than £700,000 to the party over the years and, in that context, the value of the garments he provided to the couple was relatively small.

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But there is something deeply unsavoury about Britain’s most powerful person, whose net worth is north of £3 million, relying on a benefactor to meet the costs of something as basic and personal as clothing.

Politicians everywhere have accepted gifts since time immemorial and, unless you have a visceral objection to the thought of other people enjoying themselves, there’s nothing wrong with that, so long as they are moderate, occasional, and declared in the register of interests.

MPs and MSPs are routinely entertained and hosted by businesses in their constituency and ministers often receive hospitality from companies and organisations involved in their field of interest.

The entire lobbying industry is premised on the principle of "buttering-up" and the register exists to keep such behaviour transparent and to highlight any potential conflicts.

It is also an easy guide to identify which politicians generally pay their own way, while accepting an occasional invitation to a dinner or a sports events, and those who are shameless panhandlers.

Much has been made of the £100,000 of freebies accepted by Sir Keir in the last parliament, including £40,000 worth of football tickets, to see his beloved Arsenal.

By most people’s standards, that is a very large sum of money indeed and, given the amount of political capital he derived from caricaturing the Tories as out of touch and in it for themselves, it makes him look like a rank hypocrite.

But let’s add some context to that figure. Over the period of the parliament, it works out at around £20,000 a year, and he was Leader of the Opposition at the time.

On his trips to the Emirates stadium to watch Arsenal, he occupied a corporate box, for which the club charges almost £9,000, so the amount he declared annually was equivalent to around two matches.

One commentator, while accepting that Sir Keir couldn’t be expected to sit in the stands, suggested that, for his time as a senior politician with an expensive security detail, he should simply avoid going to football matches.

Should that also apply to international matches? If England reaches the final of the next World Cup in North America, should our Prime Minister simply sit it out at home, or pay for a ticket in the stands, rather than accept the hospitality of the US Soccer Federation?

It’s also worth pointing out that the value of gifts and hospitality accepted by Sir Keir pales in comparison with his opposite number, for much of that time.

Boris Johnson famously avoided paying for anything, if he could avoid it, including his wedding, a string of luxury overseas holidays, including in Barbados and Marbella, and even the cost of £120-a-roll wallpaper for his Downing Street flat.      

Labour peer and donor Waheed Alli (Image: PA)  

Between November 2018 and May 2019, before becoming Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister, Johnson accepted donations worth £212,000. In the following three months, running for his party’s leadership, he accepted £950,000, not including £12,000 that Brown’s Hotel spent on hosting his victory party.

Most of the criticism of Sir Keir has come, not from Tory politicians, who fear any close scrutiny on their own behaviour, but from publications of a particular ideological bent, high on schadenfreude and desperate to signal the end of the new Labour government’s honeymoon period.

It’s notable that the shrillest voices represent a profession that contains some of the most shameless freeloaders imaginable.

As a correspondent and editor, I enjoyed free press trips to the US, Thailand, and Germany as well as countless weekend breaks in the UK. 

As a political journalist I had an expenses budget to wine and dine politicians who accepted the unspoken quid pro quo that, in return for me picking up the restaurant bill, they would be expected to "sing for their supper’" by providing a tip or a story line.

Expense claims were seen as an untaxed top-up to one’s salary. Those not accompanied by a receipt were not paid out, so receipts became a form of currency that were swapped and traded.

One managing editor famously walked on to the editorial floor of a Glasgow newsroom to enquire of a political journalist, whose expenses claim he was processing, which of the senior politicians he had treated to a lunch at McDonalds had ordered the Happy Meal.

In my role as a PR consultant, I have organised dinners and overnight stays at plush restaurants and hotels for journalists, and I have never seen a hungrier - or thirstier - bunch of people. 

I mention those examples only to bring a sense of proportion to the debate. Most people, in whatever job they do, enjoy some perks, whether it is a politician invited to a golf club dinner, or a supermarket worker being allowed to take home food that’s past its sell-by date at the end of a shift.

Of course, politicians are public figures and the potential for conflicts of interest and even corruption must always be monitored and avoided.

But siren voices demanding an outright ban on all gifts and donations are as misguided as they are disproportionate. Everyone loves a freebie, after all.

Carlos Alba is a journalist, author, and PR consultant at Carlos Alba Media. His latest novel, There’s a Problem with Dad, explores the issue of undiagnosed autism among older people.