What Is #DonkeyGate?
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As of Sunday 17th of May 2020 #DonkeyGate is trending on Twitter, but what is it?
The Background:
In the early hours of the same morning the Daily Mail published an article entitled “Man of the people? New Labour leader Sir Keir owns seven acres of land in Surrey worth up to £10m”. Within it, it has been stated that Keir Starmer owns seven acres of land near the Surrey area valued upwards of £10 million. However, it can only be valued upwards of £10mn if a housing estate were to be built there — this is only one speculative assessment. In spite of this, Keir Starmer has allegedly not invited a developer onto the land and has no intention of selling it.
Upon the land is a donkey sanctuary owned and run by Keir Starmer, it has been stated that it has been built without planning permission. The reason for the purchase of the land, according to a Labour spokesperson, is that Keir Starmer’s late disabled mother enjoyed being around donkeys as the family enjoyed rescuing and caring for donkeys.
The land was acquired by Keir Starmer in 1996 while he was still a human rights barrister at Middle Temple (‘The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple’).
Why It’s Trending:
Due the way the article has been written, many have interpreted the article as stating Keir Starmer is a multi-millionaire. As a result, many have interpreted that if he were a multi-millionaire, then it would be hypocritical to own this land due to his role as the leader of the Labour Party.
Many have tweeted against the article and are shaming the Daily Mail and the specific author the article due to its sensationalism and poor written quality.
‘#DonkeyGate’, therefore, has been used to satirise the article as if it were a newly exposed conspiracy or a great scandal.
Is It Relevant?:
Keir Starmer has been described as ‘soft left’ by many. The ‘soft left’, contemporarily, is generally considered the ideological middleground between socialists of the Labour party and the ‘left’ members of the Conservative and Unionist Party. Many consider the ‘soft left’ to be the ‘Blairite’ section of Labour. Other Labour parliamentarians described as ‘soft left’ have included: Ed Miliband, Sadiq Khan, and Jess Philips, among others.
The article’s title begins with “Man of the People?”, the implication of this is demonstrate to the reader that Keir Starmer is not a ‘regular person’ with a regular income, but is instead part of the financial elite. And is therefore ‘out of touch’ not only with the average person but the average Labour supporter.
To own this amount of land of such a high monetary value is, of course, very unusual, and is completely unobtainable by a person on an average salary in Britain. However, the position of MP, and indeed leader of a political party, comes with a significant salary, so to criticise anyone’s political position due to their wealth would be inherently dishonest. Moreover, Keir Starmer is a former highly-regarded barrister, which is a naturally high paying job. So it would not be highly unusual for someone in that position to be able to purchase a significant amount of land such as Starmer’s.
Is he a multimillionaire? We simply don’t know. We don’t live in a political climate, like the USA’s, where we demand to see our party leaders’ tax returns.
Jeremy Corbyn earned £74,962 per year as an MP’s base salary, but as leader earned an additional £62,400 per year, totalling approximately £136,000 per year. It can be reasonably theorised that Keir Starmer earns a similar amount from his leadership now. But this would not explain any wealth before then.
As a human rights barrister, it can be approximated that he would’ve earned upwards of £400 per hour, which pro rata, is approximately £3.3mn per year — however, this is speculative conjecture and is almost definitely inaccurate. Once again, we are simply unaware of his actual net worth, as well as his previous earnings.
Does his wealth matter? If Keir Starmer is not and is not considered to be a socialist, then there is little in the way of hypocrisy to be noted. The ‘soft left’ ideology allows for private property and the liberty to do with what one wishes with that property within certain rules. Unless Keir Starmer states he is against private property, or the ‘unnecessary’ private property, there is no hypocrisy to be found here.
