‘Keir has integrity’: Labour’s Pat McFadden says Starmer will bring reasons to be cheerful

Pat McFadden says Labour’s downbeat tone on the economy is not ‘the beginning and the end of how we look at the country’. Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian

One of the most powerful figures in government has defended Keir Starmer amid a row over gifts from a party donor, saying the prime minister is a man of integrity who is not just delivering a diet of doom and gloom.

Pat McFadden spoke out after Starmer faced claims of cronyism and failing to declare donations of clothing to his wife, as well as concern over a downbeat tone during his first weeks in power.