Labour's stunning hypocrisy

Responding to the news that David Lammy, Foreign Secretary in the current Labour government, has spent  £916,177 on flights, of which £891,719 was on private jets, since the last election, his Conservative predecessor James Cleverly had this to say:

"I’m not going to criticise the PM or Foreign Secretary for air travel on government business. 

I’m going to criticise them for breathtaking hypocrisy. 

Labour’s criticism of me when flying on government business was relentless."

Note that, because he isn't a world-class hypocrite like Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner, or most of the rest of the Labour front bench, James Cleverly is NOT criticising Lammy for doing exactly what he did himself, and not am I criticising Starmer or Lammy for something I would have defended when Conservative Prime Ministers and Foreign secretaries did it.

When in opposition Labour submitted a large number of Freedom of Information requests about and made performative public attacks on, the use by Conservative ministers of a government plane nicknamed the "Spruce Goose." Within days of taking office Labour ministers had started using that same plane. And other government planes. And spending even more on private jets.

It's not the air travel I'm criticising, it's the hypocrisy.

British Prime Minister, Foreign Secretaries and yes, even COP chairmen when the post is held by a Brit, do need to travel round the world to do their jobs and taking a plane is often justified.

What sticks in the craw is the utter hypocrisy of Labour having spend the previous fourteen years constantly criticising Conservative ministers for doing things which as soon as they got into office, and in a few cases like accepting freebies from donors like Lord Ali, even before getting into office, they have been enthusiastically doing themselves.

As Giles Dilnot put it in an article, "A very slow handclap for Labour's recent hypocrisy" on Conservative Home,

"We’ve allowed ourselves as a polity to get into a cycle that damages politics and politicians, and hypocrisy is the issue here. It’s an unedifying game of:  “I see your wallpaper and raise you clothing. I point at your pay and now raise mine. I condemn your use of something that I have every intention of using myself.”"

Whenever anyone criticises Angela Rayner, Labour will pull out the line "You just don't like working-class women being successful." 

I have no problem at all with Angela Rayner's origins and every admiration for someone who has made a success of her life, what I don't like about her is that she seems to have spent that successful career constantly attacking others for things she does herself or trying to prevent other people benefitting from things like "Right to buy" which she herself took advantage of.

Not to mention calling her opponents "scum" but getting fits of the vapours when any criticism comes back.

As Sophie Corcoran put it in the Express,

"Labour Party hypocrisy is a never-ending cycle of insults to voters."

It may have been the only time in my life I ever agreed with Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, but she wrote a piece on Labour hypocrisy a few months ago which summed a lot of this up perfectly, and you can read it here:

I got swept away by Labour optimism - now I feel nauseous at their hypocrisy

This sort of thing brings not just the politicians who do it but all of politics into disrepute. Britain deserves better from all of us.