Male Labour leaders & clothes. From Keir Hardie to Michael Foot, Jeremy Corbyn & Keir Starmer
After considerable media coverage Keir Starmer has said that he will no longer wear expensive suits funded by a Labour donor. Given part of his election platform was to sort out the Old Corruption of the Tories why he did it in the first place is puzzling.
Leaving the specific issue aside the Tory media will never be happy with Labour leader’s clothes. Keir Hardie was criticised for wearing a deerstalker hat in the Commons (it should have been a top hat). Michael Foot was roundly condemned (see below) for wearing a top of the range duffle coat on a cold November day. Jeremy Corbyn was routinely criticised as scruffy, which was just code for the fact he was a beard wearer.
As for Starmer M&S suits (in so far as they still sell them) should be adequate
Michael Foot was well known as an early CND campaigner and someone on the left of the Labour Party, one incident in his lengthy career underlined how the media sees Labour leaders left and right.
In 1981 Michael Foot was criticised for wearing a ‘donkey jacket’ at the Cenotaph. In fact it was a perfectly decent winter coat.
Michael Foot at the Cenotaph in 1981 wore a rather smart and warm coat. It’s now in the National Museum of Labour History (the People’s History Museum in Manchester)
one of the museum’s most striking exhibits – the coat worn by the Labour Party leader Michael Foot at the National Service of Remembrance, held at The Cenotaph in Whitehall, London, on Remembrance Sunday, 1981. This coat was depicted in the press as a donkey jacket, which is something a manual worker might wear. As a result, it was widely believed that Foot, whose party then supported unilateral nuclear disarmament, had disrespected those who had sacrificed their lives in defence of the nation. He was, the argument went, consequently unfit to become Prime Minister. Yet, if you see the coat in the museum it is perfectly respectable and indeed Foot was praised by the Queen Mother for his choice. But, as Foot’s private papers held in the museum archive show, he received many letters from those who believed he had worn a donkey jacket.
(Steven Fielding 2018)
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