JAN MOIR: Starmer’s visit to Taylor Swift is a curdled image of freebie-osity that will haunt him for ever

Someone took a photograph of Sir Keir and Lady Starmer at the Taylor Swift concert back in June, the first of two visits the starstruck Prime Minister made to Wembley to see his favourite pop star.

When he returned in August, he even got to meet Taylor in person, a monumental occasion that might just go down in history as the moment he also met his political doom.

The photograph was taken from their prime hospitality seats high up in the Wembley stands, on a fateful night when many Labour-voting innocents still believed the world to be full of promise and that millionaires Keir and Lady Keirette were decent enough to buy their own clothes and accessories, that they were just like us, that we were in it together, that the days of political sleaze and feather-bedding were soon to be over.

The poor naive fools.

They were looking at Keir through rose-tinted spectacles, while he was looking back at them through his super luxe freebie frames, part of a cache of £2,485 worth of ‘multiple pairs of glasses’ gifted from Waheed Alli, a Labour peer. Do you know what? It’s all so pathetic I could weep.

The Starmers looked young, vibrant and almost gorgeous in this image, one which reminded me of the famous photograph of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex sheltering together under an umbrella as they entered the Royal Albert Hall in London, on one of their last official engagements in the febrile days before Megxit.

This is the photograph of Sir Keir Starmer and Lady Starmer at the Taylor Swift concert taken back in June that has instigated the sleaze calls surrounding the Prime Minister. He even got to meet the pop star in August

Both couples exuded an air of glamorous moral invincibility, an almost Kennedyesque promise of a bright new dawn, seeming to usher in hope, truth and the tantalising prospect of something greater than the sum of the tattered past.

Well, we know how that ended with the Sussexes. Five years later and where are we now? Struggling though a sucking bog of cancelled media deals, petulant confessions, mudslinging and silly little jars of jam.

All of this in a month where Meghan was solo in an ill-fitting dress on the red carpet of a Z-list Hollywood event, Harry was pimping his dreary polo documentary series and we discover the couple have bought a new property in Portugal, quite possibly a golf course timeshare with his and hers bathrooms, a built-in, gas-fired barbeque and a sea view from the second bedroom. Or similar.

This is not where the Sussexes wanted to be, and I can’t say I’m not disappointed in them.

Meanwhile, the post-election Starmers clearly thought they were the John and Jackie of the Swiftiverse and the Instagram age, posing like Cinderella and her Rockefeller in their gifted goods.

Mark my words, as Starmer’s reputation turns to dust and the scales fall from our eyes, this curdled image of top-to-toe freebie-osity will go on to haunt him for ever.

However, let’s be fair. The Starmers weren’t alone in their VIP seats.

Joining them at various stages during Swift’s five-night run in August were Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy, who all accepted free tickets and hospitality in what cynical onlookers might have described as ‘a stampede’; a ‘true Labour landslide’; or more accurately, a ‘free for all’.

I want to be honest. Clothes and shoes and handbags are something else, but personally I don’t think there is anything wrong with senior Government ministers accepting free tickets to cultural and sporting events.

We should just be glad these political droids are still curious about something bigger than themselves, something beyond the narrow horizons of Westminster and their own personal ambition.

Surely their interest only adds to and enriches the gaiety of the nation, both theirs and ours? And I am not just saying this because I had a free Taylor Swift ticket of my own. Yes I did!

Nine point nine times out of ten, I buy my concert and review tickets myself. When I went to see Swift in Los Angeles at the beginning of the Eras tour in 2023, I paid for my nosebleed stadium seats plus the travel involved, all the better to experience the Swift phenomenon from a fan’s viewpoint. So, this offer was a nice surprise.

Approaching Wembley in my sequinned duster coat grasping my freebie ticket with both hands, I felt how Angela Rayner must feel when the private door to a DJ booth swings open or a barman shoves a Venom cocktail her way and says, this one is on us, babe.

I understood exactly how the light must flare in Starmer’s short-sighted eyes when he passes a branch of Specsavers and realises he has to spend absolutely nothing on new and trendy face furniture to make him look more appealing to the electorate. And believe me, it is intoxicating. Just ask Harry and Meghan, already notorious in America for their ‘grifting’ talents.

The serious issue of whether or not the Government leant on the Metropolitan Police to provide Swift with a blue-light escort is crucial and will surely be answered in due time. However, there was increased crowd security at Wembley during her August dates, so facilitating boosted personal security for Swift herself doesn’t seem that outrageous to me.

Yet even Labour supporters are beginning to look askance at Starmer and his greasy brand of champagne problem socialism; one which finds him stuffing his pockets with freebies and sundry gratis goodies like a sprinter on a supermarket sweep. You don’t have to look far online to feel the bitterness. ‘We couldn’t afford tickets for my grandchildren, why should he get them for free?’ was a typical response.

This sour attitude is possibly unfair, but typical of the politics of envy and spite that Labour fosters, encourages and made such a central plank in its new policies and recent election victory.

You reap what you sow, as we all know. Or as Taylor almost puts it, watch out for karma, Starmer.

Why the Mescallywag’s mum is not amused…

Hands up those who are very much looking forward to hunky Irish actor Paul Mescal skipping about in his leather kilt in Gladiator II.

That’s what I thought – absolutely everyone. However, let’s spare a thought for his poor mum Dearbhla, who was ‘upset’ by recent social media rumours about her famous son’s one-night stands.

There was a load of nonsense on TikTok that Paul ‘engaged’ women in nights of passion before ditching them the next morning. He supposedly did this by taking the girls on a romantic walk in the park, and then ‘sprinting away’.

Irish actor Paul Mescal has supposedly taken girls on a romantic walks in the park before ‘sprinting away’ after nights of passion

Paul found it all ‘hilarious’, but his typically Irish mammy was far from amused. She even wanted her son to correct the record. 

‘I was laughing but mum was upset. Isn’t that devastating?’ he told GQ magazine. Well, that’s shockin’, so it is.

I bet she told him: ‘This better not be true, Paul. Don’t make me go and get the wooden spoon.’ And let’s hope she doesn’t catch a glimpse of him in his Gladiator mini kilt.

‘You’re not going out wearing that,’ she might admonish. Oh yes, he is!

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer enjoys some time with actor and Left-wing ally Michael Sheen

I bet the PM loved this Leftie love-in

Like the Prime Minister, I also went to see the play Nye at the National Theatre, starring Michael Sheen (of course) as Labour politician and NHS founder Nye Bevan. Unlike Starmer, I paid for my ticket. 

I can’t say I enjoyed this smug piece of relentless socialist agitprop; a fundamentally dishonest play in which even Winston Churchill was portrayed as a heartless monster. All Conservatives were evil caricatures who were against the NHS from the start, the bastards. 

What was the point of it all, except to make Lefties feel even better about themselves? I bet Keir absolutely loved it, wiggling with pleasure in his free Y-fronts in his free seat

What is this week’s overbaked batch of inspiring oldies getting up to? Unbelievably, Bruce Springsteen (75) and Cliff Richard (84) have just both announced new tour dates, while Cher (78) and Dame Joan Collins (91) will be bringing their own one-woman stage shows to London in the coming weeks.

‘I do give really good diva. On stage I diva it to death,’ said Joan, modestly. That’s not all. Next month Sir Michael Caine (also 91) publishes his first self-help book Don’t Look Back, You’ll Trip Over: My Guide To Life, while actress Kathy Bates (76) has enthused that her seven-stone weight-loss has given her a new lease of life and that ‘every day feels like a miracle’.

Congratulations codgers and a reminder to us all – it’s not over till it’s over. 

The wife of a Tory councillor has been jailed for 31 months for stirring up racial hatred before the Southport riots.

On X, Lucy Connolly, a 41-year-old childminder, unwisely vented hateful thoughts about immigrants and those she erroneously felt were responsible for the death of innocents at a Taylor Swift dance class.

Her remarks were reprehensible and uncivilised – but jail? And if she is behind bars, why aren’t all the pro-Palestinian activists who regularly march on British streets calling for intifada and the destruction of Israel – and therefore the death of Jewish people, too?

Or does a different set of rules apply to them? Apparently, yes 

The fleshy fashion show I can’t bare

Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show is a huge deal in America – but why?

It is treated as some great cultural event, when in reality it is only a cross between a beauty pageant and a catwalk show, but with higher production values. And it gives the most beautiful models in the world the chance to storm around in their bras and pants, pretending to be feminists on the warpath.

The Victoria’s Secret catwalk, featuring the likes of Gigi Hadid (above), was meant to be an all-inclusive demonstration of female form

As a feminist grotesquery, it has no peer. This year it was supposed to be all about inclusiveness, diversity and empowerment, but you could have fooled me. Among the acres of perfect human female flesh, as exhibited by Gigi, Bella, and the rest, we were supposed to glimpse tan lines and even cellulite. 

Blink and you missed it. There was an overweight woman on the catwalk and two biological men who identify as trans. 

Please, Victoria’s Secret and all who sail in her – stop insulting us with this paltry tokenism masquerading as activism