There’s nothing like driving at full speed through the capital accompanied by an elite police escort. Aside from the adrenaline rush of the sound of sirens and the frenetic flash of blue lights, there’s the sight of traffic parting like the Red Sea as motorcyclists clear the way.
I experienced this first-hand more than once when I visited distant Eastern European countries with William Hague when he was leader of the opposition and I was his press secretary.
And so I can understand why Taylor Swift’s ‘mother’ lobbied so vigorously for her pop princess daughter to receive the VVIP escort treatment.
But there is a reason why such high security is restricted to a privileged few: senior cabinet ministers and the Royal Family, for example. And it’s very simple: the taxpayer pays the bill.
Why should Taylor Swift (or Tom Cruise or Sir Elton John) have police guards at our expense? Especially when the police have not identified any credible threat to life or limb?
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper attended the Taylor Swift concert with her husband Ed Balls.
But yesterday we learned that the police did not abandon long-established protocols just because London Mayor Sadiq Khan and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper (who attended the concert with her husband Ed Balls) suggested they consider it. , but because the country’s main legal official. got involved.
Only after the Attorney General, Lord Hermer KC, wrote to the Met did it relent.
And who could have convinced him to send such a letter? Fingers pointed at accident-prone, gift-stealing Sir Keir Starmer last night.
Apart from bagging free tickets to a Swift concert (and being photographed hugging his wife Victoria at the event), the Prime Minister is one of Lord Hermer’s oldest friends and received a generous £5,000 donation from him towards his leadership campaign. The truth is that ever since Harold Wilson gave the Beatles MBEs in 1965, the Labor Party has been in thrall to celebrity, convinced that some of its stardust will stick to the dandruff-covered shoulders of its sad leaders.
No one embraced the concept more enthusiastically than Tony Blair, who came up with the brilliant idea of ’Cool Britannia’ and invited the biggest stars of the day, including Oasis, to be photographed with him inside Number 10.
It later blew up in Blair’s face, of course, when the Gallaghers came to believe they had been used by him. The next headlines read: “Noel looks back angrily at drinks party with Blair.”
Money has long been Labour’s other Achilles heel. Just six months into its first term, it emerged that New Labor had granted Formula One an exemption from its tobacco advertising ban after receiving a £1m donation from all-powerful racing boss Bernie Ecclestone. .
He was later forced to return it on the “advice” of the head of the public standards watchdog. How humiliating!
Then there are the gifts. Tony Blair spent a succession of summer holidays as a free guest of various villa-owning Mr. Moneybags, including Geoffrey Robinson. One year, Blair and his family stayed in an Italian villa costing £10,000 a week as guests of the Tuscan government, which had spent £500,000 renovating the 22-bedroom villa before his visit. It earned him the nickname ‘Lo Scroccone’ or ‘The Scrounger’.
Singer Taylor Swift performed at Wembley in August this year as part of her Eras tour.
Sir Keir Starmer with his wife Victoria at the Swift concert which he received free tickets to attend
And let’s not even get started on his éminence grise Peter Mandelson. After failing to declare a £400,000 personal loan for his Notting Hill home, New Labour’s great architect was forced to resign as minister.
Then there was the famous “cash for passport scandal” involving the billionaire Hinduja family who had “secretly bankrolled the Labor Party for five years”.
Mandelson’s trial was so bad that he even enjoyed a ten-year friendship with the late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Fast forward to today and nothing has changed. Despite an overwhelming majority and the world at their feet, Labor politicians still have their noses in the hole.
And none more so than Keir ‘pass glasses’ Starmer. Why do you need gifts? What does it say about your sense of entitlement? Is it because this arrogant man thinks he’s worth it?
By encouraging the Metropolitan Police to green light blue lights for Taylor Swift – and thus diminish the authority of Scotland Yard’s elite unit – all the Labor high command has done is call into question its own judgment and integrity. .