Less a car crash, more a motorway pile-up of an interview: Croydon West MP Sarah Jones’s defence of Labour’s freebie culture was unravelled by Newsnight’s Victoria Derbyshire this week
After a week going through the debates and expenses declarations at the party’s annual conference in Liverpool, ANDREW FISHER, pictured right, analyses the performances of the MPs who represent Croydon
It should have been an uplifting and upbeat affair: the first Labour conference in 15 years with the party in government.
Instead, it began with news coverage dominated by rows over dodgy donations, freebies and a power struggle in Downing Street among Keir Starmer’s senior staff.
The freebies row had started a week before conference, but new revelations and woeful excuses have given the story extra legs. There were examples of each from two of Croydon’s Labour MPs.
It emerged that Steve Reed, MP for Streatham and Croydon North, had been treated to a football match and hospitality, worth £1,786, paid for by a company that owns 75% of Northumbrian Water.
Football fan: Steve Reed OBE
As Environment Secretary, Reed is in charge of the nation’s policy on water and pollution. And water pollution. Northumbrian Water spilt sewage into England’s waterways for 280,000 hours in 2023.
Croydon West’s Labour MP Sarah Jones appeared on BBC Newsnight during conference week, her task to defend freebies. Her interview with Victoria Derbyshire was less of a car crash, and more a motorway pile-up…
After claiming that accepting gifts and entertainment, concert tickets and corporate hospitality somehow helps politicians to do their jobs, Derbyshire asked Jones, “How did accepting four tickets for the Capital Summer Time Ball at Wembley worth £400 last summer help you do your job?”
“MPs take hospitality, they’re offered lots of things,” Jones said, somewhat weakly.
“How did it help you do your job?” Derbyshire persisted.
“It was useful and it was a fun thing to do, and I took my kids”
“Useful in what way?” asked an increasingly perplexed Derbyshire
“MPs are offered hospitality and that is something that we sometimes do” replied Jones, visibly floundering.
Realising that the “useful” and “helpful” lines with which Jones – in common with other Labour ministers wheeled out to explain the party’s, and Prime Minister’s, position on this, had gone down like a cup of cold sick, Jones switched to contrition, acknowledging “we’re very lucky to do that… really appreciate that it’s difficult and people are frustrated by what they’re seeing”.
“Do you get it?” asked Derbyshire
“I do get it,” Jones said, sounding somewhat deflated.
“OK. Thank you very much for being with us,” said Derbyshire, taking mercy.
Watch it for yourself.
Not to be left out, Croydon South’s Tory MP Chris Philp – our long-standing champion at cack-handed opportunism – decided to wade into Labour’s freebies row by telling the BBC’s Laura Kuennsberg that he only accepted free hospitality as Policing Minister in order to observe “the policing of a football match”.
The Times reported last year that Philp was actually a Culture Minister at the time, and that he failed to declare £6,000 worth of football freebies, due to what he later claimed was “an administrative oversight”.
On top of the various freebie scandals, Labour and Keir Starmer’s poll ratings were nosediving due to the emblematic policy of Labour’s first 80 days in power being to take money off pensioners.
The cuts to the Winter Fuel Payment has united in opposition the National Pensioners Convention, the Trade Union Congress, every other political party in Britain, and by the end of the week, Labour Party conference itself, too.
‘Change begins’: dissent and protest was not tolerated at this year’s Labour Party conference, where one delegate was dragged from the hall by his neck
Earlier on in her sacrificial stint on Newsnight, Jones had been asked about the cuts to Winter Fuel Payments. “Could some elderly people die due to cuts in the winter fuel allowance?” Derbyshire asked.
“It won’t happen,” Jones declared, in what must be greatest hostage to fortune uttered by a politician this week. Or sausage to fortune, as Keir Starmer might say.
During his leadership speech, the Prime Minister said, “I call again for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the return of the sausages… the hostages… ”. The gaffe spawned a million memes on social media. Speaking on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme the following morning, I resisted the temptation to say it was a banger of a speech.
Instead, I focused on the fact that despite Keir Starmer’s repeated emphasis on “a changed Labour Party” – the conference slogan everywhere you looked was “Change begins” – in fact the policies that had been highlighted this week were all lifted from the 2019 manifesto: public ownership of the railways, bus re-regulation, the package of workers’ rights, clean energy by 2030 and the Hillsborough Law.
Keeping busy: Natasha Irons, or whoever it is that manages the MP’s social media, managed at least to recognise the death of Croydon police officer Matt Ratana
In contrast to her more established Croydon parliamentarian colleagues, Croydon East’s new MP Natasha Irons managed to remain scandal-free throughout conference. Her entry in the Register of Members’ Interests contained no freebies, no declarable donations and confirmed she had not worked a second job since her election. Irons was elected on July 4.
Instead, she seemed busy focusing on policy issues and finding time to post about the memorial service for Police Sergeant Matt Ratana, which coincided with conference. Neither Reed, Jones nor former policing minister, Philp, managed to do so.
Let’s hope Irons stays off the gravy train and focused on her constituents.
- From 2015 to 2019, Andrew Fisher was the Labour Party’s Director of Policy under Jeremy Corbyn. Fisher is also the author of The Failed Experiment – and how to build an economy that works, and now writes columns for InsideCroydon, the i newspaper and is a regular pundit on BBC and Sky News programmes
Andrew Fisher’s recent columns:
- Labour MPs’ ‘tears’ won’t keep the elderly warm this winter
- Dear Angela: It’s time for you to act and fund Croydon fairly
- Selling off borough’s public libraries is act of social vandalism
- ‘Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others!’
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
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ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2024, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SEVENTH successive year in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine
Two things in particular stood out for me from the Conference:
1. Both Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves were heckled from the conference floor over the party’s failure to call for an end to arms supplies to Israel, still engaged in its genocidal war in Gaza. The hecklers were very roughly manhandled and thrown out of the hall, with Starmer and Reeves respectively laughing or smirking, and making no attempt to address the issue.
2. As Andrew points out a motion calling for the reversal of the cuts to winter fuel payments was passed. But this was largely on the votes of the union delegates. A clear majority of the constituency delegates voted against the motion and for the cuts to continue. Starmer keeps saying he’s changed the Labour Party. He has…for the worse.
Andrew as a member of the old and failed Corbyn Regime of the Labour Party expresses such surprise that all these Westminster Politicans are receiving declared gifts and benefits from donors who clearly have a vested interest in providing them, but then I look at Jeremy Corbyn’s register of interests with his new political party and my laptop crashes as I attempt to reach the bottom of this list. Unfortunately this is the Westminster system at work.
The Thatcher revolution as much as anything was about allowing private vested interests to have greater influence over law makers in setting policy and this is the process at work.
As a system it seems to lead to bad and failed policy making where politicians can no longer correct things that go wrong, but Andrew’s issue is not this. His issue with it all is that it is the wrong type of people making the donations rather than the right type of people. There has to be an interface with law makers and people trying to influence them.
The current focus on the Labour Party at least demonstrates they are far more honest in declaring these interests thatn the Tories with their administrative errors when they are found out for failing to declare them. Through gritted teeth I have to say perhaps Starmer is doing a public service by showing in warts and all how politicians are provided with gifts and benefits and perhaps the public finally will come to the realisation that to ensure their politicians are able to make clear unbiased policy for their benefit that may have to stump up more money to get a better quality of politician and process to provide it than the failing one we have now.
Go Derek – thanks for reminding us that ‘Red Andy’ is a member of the failed Corbyn experiment to make Labour unelectable. I always keep that in mind when reading his, usually, well-written and well-informed pieces.
Where’s the “surprise”, Del?
Don’t think anyone is surprised, especially not after the dodgy accounting for donations by Steve Reed’s mate, Morgan McSweeney, at Labour Together.