Gary Neville has admitted that he is alarmed at how much coverage the freebie scandal is getting in the media.
Labour representatives have convened in Liverpool for the party’s conference, but a dark shadow hangs over the event after it was revealed that Sir Keir Starmer has accepted a private box at Arsenal as well as clothes donations.
Speaking to The News Agents podcast at a fringe event, Neville said: “I can’t get my breath if I’m honest. I’m startled and alarmed at the amount of scrutiny that this is getting.”
Neville took the opportunity not only to defend Starmer but also to critique the past Conservative Government, highlighting substantial contracts awarded with minimal oversight during the pandemic and contrasting them with the emphasis on Starmer’s use of a private box provided without charge.
“It’s certainly a very different approach and treatment to what I think has happened in the last five or 10 years. When I think of the billions of pounds of contracts that were handed out during Covid on VIP lanes without much scrutiny.
“When I think of the £40million helicopter rides and the private jets that every single Conservative minister was getting, again without much actual scrutiny,” he added.
“And a man who’s watched with his family his football team for the last two decades, paying for his tickets every single week has been told that he can’t now go and watch his football team because obviously it’s a security detail want him to watch it in a certain area of a stadium.
“I find it alarming that he can’t go and watch his football team when I know from meeting him here a couple of years ago, that is his one moment of release each week with his children.
“And I don’t think any normal person would begrudge a person going to watch a football match together when they’ve done that all their lives, and now they’re being told that they have to do it in a certain way.
“So for me, I can’t really believe it. It’s a different level of approach. What we need to go is go back a little bit and get those billions of pounds back from the previous government’s awarding of contracts – let’s concentrate on that.”
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