In terms of Reeves’ family values, the chancellor of the exchequer can hardly be faulted, she has been explaining, for snagging box tickets to a teens’ pop concert, careless of the consequences if this gift became public when her spring statement was slashing welfare. “It is a balancing act in my job to try and be a good parent”. Inferior parents should note that help is available: Sabrina Carpenter returns to the UK this summer, seats available for £191 each (VIP £364).

Keir Starmer once said that, under him, Britain would be the party of the family and the “best place to grow up in”: we can already feel confident that, thanks to his approach to dynamic sponging, no child of a Labour minister need be denied their essential football or concert outing, regardless of ticket price or scarcity. Starmer leads the way with his non-negotiable visits to theArsenal directors’ box, a perk that Sky Sports at Chequers cannot be expected to replace. “It means I can continue to do something which is really special to me,” he said (after his free specs and outfits scandal), “which is to go to football with my boy.”

But as Reeves said last week, risking a further Labour masterclass in tin-eared entitlement, Sabrina Carpenter is not special to her. She obtained reportedly £600 worth of tickets on a more sacrificial basis for her daughter, for whom, we are invited to believe, no other companion was available. Plus Reeves would have loved to be “in normal seats”. Anyway, she eventually conceded, after repeated freebie questions had disrupted post-Statement interviews: “I wouldn’t do it again, I felt I was doing the right thing, but I do understand perceptions.”

Leave aside the ethical complexities that would, if poncing free stuff is virtuous, make Boris Johnson a living saint – why did she do it in the first place?........

© The Guardian