Gary Neville wades into Keir Starmer controversy: ‘Keep our Prime Minister safe’​

Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer has courted controversy for accepting a private box at Arsenal having previously sat in the stands and Gary Neville has now shared his thoughts on the situation

​Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer has courted controversy for accepting a private box at Arsenal having previously sat in the stands and Gary Neville has now shared his thoughts on the situation Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer has courted controversy for accepting a private box at Arsenal having previously sat in the stands and Gary Neville has now shared his thoughts on the situation   

Gary Neville has been left baffled by criticism facing Keir Starmer after he accepted a private box at Arsenal.

The Prime Minister has taken private tickets at his boyhood club despite having previously had a place among supporters in the stands. Starmer has been given the box free of charge – and claimed that it is due to the need for added security.

Labour-supporting Neville has now spoken out and cannot wrap his head around the criticism that Starmer is facing. He has also taken the opportunity to have a pop at the previous Conservative Government.

Speaking to The News Agents at a Labour Party conference 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.

“It’s certainly a very different approach and treatment to what I think has happened in the last 5 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 £40m helicopter rides and the private jets that every single Conservative minister was getting, again without much actual scrutiny. 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.

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“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.

“Because actually Keir Starmer is declaring everything. I’m not quite sure that last government was declaring everything either.”

With Starmer pointing to the need for added security, Neville has emphasised that suggestion, claiming his safety should be paramount. Neville added:“He’s the prime minister of our country. We know that leaders around the world at this moment in time can be under threat. And we need to make sure our prime minister is safe, don’t we?

“He used to as the leader of the opposition go and sit with the fans in the stadium in his seats with great humility and not have a problem with it every single week.

“But he was told a few weeks before the election that he had to change that because he was potentially going to become Prime Minister. I’m sure he’d love to go back and sit in his normal seats. He doesn’t want this. He’d like to go back and sit with the fans that he sat with all of his life.”

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