Should have gone to Specsavers. You don’t need £2,435-worth of designer glasses to see how corrosive it is to the government when the media, traditional and social, is filled with snickering stories and scornful commentaries about who paid for the prime minister’s “luxury” eyewear and his wife’s frocks. That’s not what the Labour leader should want as a big topic of conversation at any time and certainly not in the run-up to his party conference. Nor would you want a nasty rash of stories, sourced to leaks from disgruntled personalities within government, about the salary being paid to Number 10’s chief of staff, one of the accusations being that she spurned advice not to accept more than the prime minister himself. Those who cackle that Sue Gray is the only pensioner to have been made better off by this government have come up with a joke that wounds.
To use a phrase popular among spin doctors, “the optics” of all this are awful. They are particularly bad given that the prime minister has spent so much of his time since he came to office alternately telling everyone that his will be a purer-than-pure “government of service” and that the immediate future for the country is one of tough decisions during which things will get worse before they get better. One Labour veteran, who has known and been supportive of Sir Keir for years, remarks: “The freebies suggest we’re out of touch and no different to the Tories. None of this is disastrous – these are early days – but it is damaging. It will become a defining part of the political character of Keir if he’s not careful.” Another influential Labour figure groans: “Everyone who wants the government to succeed is in despair.”
