MPs freebies latest: Sir Keir Starmer and Liz Truss know how to spend it

Londoner’s Diary

Why become an MP? Power? Fame? To change the world? Delete where appropriate. But why stay an MP? The perks, of course. A periodic update to the MPs’ register of interests reveals who takes what and how much it would cost for mere mortals. For example footie fanatic Keir Starmer, who has rarely missed an Arsenal match, has recently been siphoning from the gravy train. He recently bagged two hospitality tickets for Man City v Arsenal worth £900 and four to Brighton v Arsenal worth about £500.

Which other familiar faces have been rinsing the freebies? The 49-day PM Liz Truss has kept up her taste for the high-life, enjoying free use of the Windsor Suite at Heathrow (she made two visits worth £1,800 each in March) when she jets around the world spreading her free market message. Diane Abbot was a “special guest” at the Grove Hotel Hertfordshire, enjoying an overnight stay worth £1,144. Tory MP Stuart Anderson and Chief Whip Simon Hart enjoyed a clay shoot and dinner from the British Association of Shooting and Conservation collectively worth £1,416. Six MPs pulled in favours to get into the Brit awards on hospitality tickets worth £10,200 in total, while sixteen tickets to Cheltenham races were expensed by four MPs (worth £7,140). All of this is, of course, strictly above board.

And plenty of MPs get pocket money for expressing their opinions in newspaper articles rather than in the Commons, though rates vary. Suella Braverman got £4,500 for six articles in the Telegraph while her old colleague Ben Wallace bagged £4,000 for writing two. Similar disparities exist at GB News, where Jacob Rees-Mogg gets £29k for every 40 hours he works. Fellow MP presenter Lee Anderson is on a measly £100k annual salary from the channel.

Miliband is back!

Centrist dads, rejoice! David Miliband, the moderate king-across-the-water, is finally returning to British politics after a decade out of the fray. But unfortunately for Miliband-fans, the man once tipped as a future PM will be keeping his comeback strictly to the football pitch. The former foreign secretary is due to don a kit at Loftus Road next week with a host of other politicians in a charity football match against journalists. The match, sponsored by the Betting and Gambling Council, will raise money for SportAid. Miliband’s team includes Manchester mayor Andy Burnham and former shadow chancellor Ed Balls, both of whom ran against him for the Labour leadership, and Mayor Sadiq Khan. A team of rivals.

A turn-up for the books

Even more congrats are due to short-serving PM Liz Truss, whose debut book Ten Years to Save the West is flying off the shelves. It’s landed a top three placing in The Sunday Times’s non-fiction bestseller list, with more than 2,000 copies sold so far. It is beaten only by Knife, Salman Rushdie’s memoir of the attempt to assassinate him, and drag queen RuPaul’s autobiography. Eclectic!

Dr Dan’s history rewritten

Dr Dan Poulter, the MP who defected from Tory to Labour last week, is so backbench he is nearly falling off, but we have marvelled at the whirring of the Labour spin machine. Suddenly Poulter — who once had a brief stint in government a decade ago — is now a “top Tory”, a man of strong principles, broad experience and boundless charm.