Jane Clifton: Why saying yes to the dress is not a good look for UK’s government

Trouble is, it’s not just the lure of posh clothes that has put the UK’s new Labour government in the dogbox with voters. Behind a billionaire’s donation of costly outfits to these avowedly socialist politicians is a more consequential political risk than vanity: the donation of policy advice.

So far, not all funding sources for the more than two dozen private advisers to Labour’s shadow cabinet before the election have been disclosed. A Labour-aligned think tank that attracts donations financed many of them.

Advisers are now also being loaned to ministers, including Chancellor Rachel Reeves. This isn’t necessarily sinister, but it dwarfs the daily revelations of free couture, concert tickets and other baubles in raising potentials for conflict of interest.

Politicians naturally hire and consult like-minded advisers. But if a business or individual is paying for them, queasy doubts ensue.

Loaned aides may be within the rules, provided details are declared. But in the current patchwork of confirmed and suspected donations, the polls suggest the public is shocked that this government should be just as insouciant as the Conservatives about accepting freebies from potentially influential private interests.

As perks go, a free suit or vanity photo are pretty much self-negating. Once people know the outfit was a freebie and the pic was contrived, all glamour and mystique evaporate. With donated advisers, however, the key question is practically unanswerable: in whose interests are the donated advisers advising?

Donors may simply be improving the quality of advice by paying for people whose talents the party or cabinet can’t afford. But it’s hard to disprove the counterfactual – that donors expect certain decisions or even favours to flow from that advice.

Clouding the picture is the sheer admirability of the most conspicuous donor, Lord Waheed Alli. At press time, there was no suggestion he’d directly funded advisers, but he has proudly given clothes, accessories, accommodation and other donations to the party and its grandees over many years, totalling hundreds of thousands of pounds.

A child of modestly incomed immigrants, he created a groundbreaking television empire with hit shows including The Big Breakfast. He became the first openly gay peer at 35, and has deep personal friendships with a number of Labour figures. It would be more newsworthy had he not donated handsomely to the party.