Politics LIVE: Angela Rayner reignites Lord Alli row as she admits accepting £3,550 of free clothes from Labour donor
Angela Rayner has admitted to receiving thousands of pounds worth of free clothes from “donorgate” Labour peer Lord Alli.
In her register of interests, the Deputy Prime Minister declared she took some £3,550 in “work clothes” from the top party donor.
After previously claiming she had taken the cash for help with “Parliamentary duties”, she then changed the record after taking advice from authorities, The Times reports.
The register now says “work clothes for use while undertaking my duties” rather than the previous “donation in kind for undertaking Parliamentary duties”.
While it’s the first time that Rayner – also the Housing Secretary – has brought her clothes donations to light, Lord Alli appears five times on her register of interests.
Back in September, it came to light that Lord Alli had greenlit Rayner’s use of his multi-million-dollar apartment in New York – prompting outrage and calls for an official investigation by the Conservatives.
But the Deputy PM defended herself to the BBC, saying: “I think I followed the rules.”
Addressing the backlash, she added: “I get that people are frustrated, in particular the circumstances that we’re in, but donations for gifts and hospitality and monetary donations have been a feature of our politics for a very long time.
“People can look it up and see what people have had donations for, and the transparency is really important.”
FOLLOW BELOW FOR MORE LIVE UPDATES THROUGHOUT THE DAY…
Badenoch wins crucial senior Tory endorsements as one day remains until new party leader announced
Kemi Badenoch has been handed a raft of senior Conservative Party endorsements in the wake of yesterday’s leadership contest voting coming to a close.
The Shadow Housing Secretary has taken on a litany of frontbench backers – including, most recently, shadow Welsh and education secretaries Lord Davies and Damian Hinds, respectively.
Meanwhile, rival leadership hopeful Robert Jenrick has recently been backed by ex-Home Secretary Suella Braverman and Wendy Morton.
Badenoch now has the support of 13 Shadow Cabinet members, while Jenrick has three.
The two went head-to-head on a GB News special political programme on October 17 – with the audience picking Badenoch as their favourite to take over from Rishi Sunak.
But with just over 24 hours remaining until Sunak’s successor is announced, a Badenoch ally has counselled caution, telling The Telegraph: “The little that we do know is that the turnout is low.
“The issue with low turnout is it makes it very hard to predict what is going on.”
Politics LIVE
Welcome back to GB News’ Politics LIVE blog.
We’ll be updating this page throughout the day with live political updates as they come in.