IT’S FREEBIE time again — this time Keir Starmer’s ministers are grabbing freebie outings to the Brit Awards.

Last October a scandal blew up around many ministers accepting freebies to Taylor Swift concerts. Ministers accepting luxury hospitality events while they argued for low spending in public services and benefits looked like entitled, arrogant behaviour from MPs who wanted to use Labour as just their personal ticket to the top.

After weeks of controversy, it looked like Starmer’s ministers finally understood how bad this looked. But it seems they have un-understood all over again.

According to the latest Register of Ministers’ Gifts and Hospitality, Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds accepted a £2,160 free ticket to go to the Brit Awards in March. Reynolds says he didn’t take guests, so he can’t even claim — as some ministers tried during the Taylor Swift debacle — that his kids made him do it.

So Reynolds, a 44-year-old member of the Cabinet, thought taking tickets to see Jack Whitehall give awards to Charlie XCX was a good idea. Or perhaps Reynolds thought it was really important that the Business Secretary listen to Sabrina Carpenter singing about Bed Chem. Carpenter performed her song with a troupe of dancers dressed as busby-wearing guardsmen in front of a giant union jack, before she jumped into a heart-shaped bed, so perhaps this fits with Starmer’s new flag-waving patriotism.

Reynolds was one of the ministers who tried to defend acceptance of freebies last year, saying that tickets to executive boxes for football matches and concerts is “not a perk of the job, it’s part of the job. People want to engage with decision-makers. They want to ask you to be aware of what they are doing.”

The “people” here are the rich “decision-makers” with enough clout to get a minister into a VIP box. Reynolds’s tickets to the Brit Awards were paid for by Universal Music.

Universal Music chief executive Lucian Grainge likes to tell interviewers he grew up loving bands like the Clash, but he seems to have taken their quip about “turning rebellion into money” as career advice. Lots of musical artists struggle, but the “suits” like Graine do very well.

Universal Music Group accounts show Grainge was paid £119 million in 2023, and a more modest £30m in 2024.

Grainge believes in buying political influence. Universal Music donated to David Cameron’s Conservatives, leading to Grainge being knighted. Grainge has adapted to the new Labour government. He took a prominent role at Labour’s Investment Summit last October, so Reynolds might believe that going to the Brits is just part of his business engagement.

For the businessmen like Grainge, “engaging” with Labour like this appears to be very successful. Labour has sprung benefit cuts on the disabled, but looks unlikely to spring extra taxes on the rich or their corporations. Perhaps disabled campaigners should club together to take Labour ministers to see more pop concerts.

Reynolds wasn’t the only minister at the Brits. Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy and Culture Minister Chris Bryant also went. Nandy got her single ticket, worth £2,160, from Warner Group, while Bryant and his guest got their £4,560 worth of tickets from the BPI, the record company trade body organising the event. As they are both in the Culture Ministry, their attendance was perhaps more to be expected. Though why two culture ministers had to go the Brits, with guests, is another matter.

It is harder to explain why Enfield MP Feryal Clark and her guest got £3,120 worth of free tickets to the Brits courtesy of the BPI. She is a junior science minister, responsible for AI and digital security, and this was hardly a scientific event. It just looks like another case of a Labour minister grabbing treats to mingle with the elite.

A widening divide?

ONE RECENT report of Starmer facing back-bench resistance to his further rightward moves jumped out for me.

Bloomberg reported that Starmer was facing — still low-level — complaints from backbenchers about his cuts in PIP disability benefits and winter fuel allowance, his commitment to cuts in many public services and his new anti-migrant rhetoric.

Many backbenchers want Rachel Reeves to be prepared to tax the rich more and borrow to invest more, breaking her self-restricting “rules.”

However, Team Starmer are not giving in. Bloomberg reported that “a supporter of the Prime Minister suggested many Labour MPs are learning the wrong lessons from Farage’s successes. Many in the party still hold a liberal-left mindset typical of a decade ago that saw Labour’s job as defending people on benefits and opposing the political right on immigration, the person said, arguing that the British public had since shifted significantly toward more sceptical positions on both.”

Now we do not know which minister, MP or adviser Bloomberg was anonymously quoting. But Bloomberg reports for investors and businessmen — it is very right wing, but in its own terms committed to accuracy. This will not be a made-up quote.

What it makes clear is that there are very right-wing people at the core of Team Starmer who don’t believe in a “liberal-left” mindset or “defending people on benefits and opposing the political right on immigration.” Basically, people at the heart of the Labour government disagree with everything Labour members — including the most moderate — hold dear.

The MPs closest to Team Starmer are way to the right of how many, possibly most, back-bench MPs see themselves.

If Labour members and MPs want Labour to stop attacking benefits and migrants and public spending, they need to understand they are facing a Labour leadership that really, deeply wants to do these things, and nothing short of membership or back-bench rebellion will deflect them from doing so.

Follow Solomon Hughes on X @SolHughesWriter.