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Sir Keir Starmer was gifted free Taylor Swift concert tickets worth £4,000 whilst on the campaign trail earlier this year.
The now-prime minister took a “swift” break from his campaign in June to attend the singer’s first stop at Wembley stadium on her record-breaking Eras Tour.
At the time, Sir Keir shared a sweet picture of himself and his wife Victoria in front of the 90,000 strong crowd as they looked on from a hospitality booth.
It has now come to light that the Labour leader got to enjoy the show for free, as he was gifted four hospitality tickets worth £1,000 each, courtesy of the Premier League.
The June show was not the only concert Starmer enjoyed for free. In December he received two tickets worth £800 to the Capital’s Jingle Bell Ball at the O2.
Most of his gifted outings were unsurprisingly to support his favourite football team, Arsenal.
The prime minister was gifted free tickets to 12 football games with hospitality over the last year, amounting to a total of £19,340. The most expensive of these were two hospitality tickets, worth £1,200 each, to the Chelsea vs Arsenal football match in October last year.
Starmer also almost received clothing close to the same value as football tickets from the former chairman of ASOS.
Labour peer Lord Alli gifted him £16,200 worth of “work clothing” as well as £2,485 worth of “multiple pairs of glasses”.
Lord All also gifted Starmer accommodation worth £20,437.28 from May 29 to July 13 this year – it is unclear what accommodation this refers to.
While Starmer attended Taylor Swift’s first stop at Wembley, he may be disappointed he missed her playing his favourite song ‘Change’ when she returned in August.
Asked about his opinion of the American pop star’s performance by reporters in June, Sir Keir replied: “She was fantastic. Absolutely fantastic.”
“What I learned last night is my daughter knows every album, every song, and every word of every song, and she wasn’t alone among the teenage girls who were there. It was utterly brilliant.”
He added: “I know I will be asked what is my favourite song and I am not going to pretend I have got every album and know every song, although Change is the one for obvious reasons.”
The Labour manifesto, entitled Change, shares its name with a song from Swift’s 2008 album Fearless.
On Monday night’s show, the singer chose the track as one of her two ‘surprise songs’ which form a part of her set.
The choice did not go unnoticed by fans on social media who jokingly speculated the prime minister may have returned to watch the show for a second time.
One person on X/Twitter who attended the concert wrote: “funniest part about the eras show on the 19th is that i was sitting next to a man that kinda knew the songs on the setlist like you could tell he recognized them but didn’t know the lyrics that well but somehow he knew EVERY SINGLE LYRIC to CHANGE?????????”
Others soon replied to the post suggesting: “You sat next to the UK prime minister and had no idea.”
Source: independent.co.uk
