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Sir Keir Starmer met Taylor Swift when he attended her concert at Wembley Stadium, Sky News understands.

It has emerged the prime minister and his family spoke to the pop star and her mum for 10 minutes and discussed the Southport stabbings.

The revelation comes amid questions over government intervention in talks over the security for the concerts after Swift was given a taxpayer-funded police escort despite reservations from the Met.

Politics latest: PM refuses to rule out increasing employer national insurance

It had not been clear previously if Sir Keir and Swift had met at the gig.

There was no discussion about the provision of security for the artist, which Downing Street said was an independent operational matter for police, it is understood.

Sir Keir and his family were given free tickets to the concert on 20 August, which were declared as required, and have since been paid back.

FILE - Taylor Swift performs at Wembley Stadium as part of her Eras Tour, June 21, 2024, in London. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP, File)
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Taylor Swift performing at Wembley Stadium. Pic: AP

The meeting came after the superstar cancelled gigs on her Eras Tour in Austria due to a terror threat, and the mass stabbing in Southport at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class, when three young girls were killed.

Sir Keir was invited to the August show by Universal Music, which is based in his constituency of Holborn and St Pancras.

He paid back the cost of the tickets after a row over ministers accepting freebies dominated headlines during his first 100 days.

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Questions over Taylor Swift motorcade

Further questions were raised after a report in The Sun alleged Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and London Mayor Sadiq Khan spoke to the Metropolitan Police to encourage them to give the megastar a “VVIP escort”, when she returned to the capital to complete the European leg of her sell-out tour in August.

The Met was reportedly reluctant to sign it off as a blue-light escort is typically reserved for senior members of the Royal Family and high-level politicians, because it comes at huge expense to the taxpayer, the newspaper reported.

Swift’s mother Andrea, who is also her manager, apparently threatened to pull her daughter’s three shows if the police convoy was not provided.

The government has denied that senior Labour figures were given tickets to the shows in exchange for police protection, stressing the Met makes decisions independently from politicians.

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Last week, deputy prime minister Angela Rayner said it was down to the fact Swift’s concerts in Vienna had been cancelled due to a foiled terror attack, which was intended to kill tens of thousands of fans.

“We needed to make sure that that person was safe. And it was a policing matter, not an issue for politicians. It was the police that make the decision,” she said.

She added that police provided the security to ensure Swift could continue with the concerts “which brought in huge amounts of investment of money into our economy, including those small businesses that need that support”.

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy told Sky News “you would expect” the home secretary and the mayor to be involved in a conversation “where there is a security risk”, such as after the Vienna bomb plot.

“I really utterly reject that there’s been any kind of wrongdoing or undue influence in this case,” she said.

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The crypto fund domicile decision: EU or the UK?

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The crypto fund domicile decision: EU or the UK?

The crypto fund domicile decision: EU or the UK?

As the EU’s MiCA regulation and the UK’s evolving crypto laws diverge, fund managers face a key choice: to opt for the EU’s legal certainty and passporting or the UK’s flexible, innovation-driven approach.

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Sir Keir Starmer hits out at politicians who ‘shout and scream but do nothing’ over grooming gangs

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Sir Keir Starmer hits out at politicians who 'shout and scream but do nothing' over grooming gangs

Sir Keir Starmer has said he gets “frustrated” with politicians who “shout and scream but do nothing” as he defended past comments about a grooming gangs inquiry.

Speaking to Sky News’s political editor Beth Rigby, the prime minister was asked if he regretted saying in January that those calling for a national probe into paedophile rings were “jumping on a far-right bandwagon” – given he has now agreed to one.

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Sir Keir said he was “really clear” he was talking about the Tories, who were demanding an inquiry they never set up when they were in government.

He said: “I was calling out those politicians.

“I am frustrated with politics when people shout and scream a lot and do nothing when they’ve got the opportunity to do it. It’s one of the worst aspects of politics, in my view.”

Sir Keir also said there “must be accountability” for authorities who “shied away” from talking about the ethnicity of perpetrators for fear of being branded racist, as exposed in a report by Baroness Casey published on Monday.

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Asked if he is happy for “social workers, policemen and people that failed” to be held accountable, the prime minister said: “Where the inquiry uncovers failure or wrongdoing, then there should absolutely be accountability.

“That is amongst the purposes of an inquiry, and it’s a statutory inquiry… which will therefore mean there is power to compel evidence of witnesses because it’s important that it is comprehensive and important that it gets to every single issue. And as part of that process, there’s accountability for individuals who did wrong.”

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Data dismissed ‘Asian grooming gangs’

Baroness Casey was asked to produce an audit of sexual abuse carried out by grooming gangs in England and Wales in January, when comments by tech billionaire Elon Musk brought the scandal back into the spotlight.

The government initially resisted calls from the Tories for a national inquiry into grooming gangs, saying they wanted to focus on implementing the recommendations of Professor Alexis Jay’s seven-year review into child abuse.

The review concluded in 2022 but the Conservatives did not implement its recommendations before they lost the election last July.

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The government’s position has changed following Baroness Casey’s audit, which recommended an inquiry.

Her report found that ethnicity data is not recorded for two-thirds of grooming gang perpetrators.

However at a local level in three police forces – Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire – “there has been a disproportionality of group-based child sexual exploitation offending by men of Asian ethnicity”.

The cross bench peer said instead of looking into whether ethnicity or cultural factors played a part, authorities “avoided the topic altogether for fear of appearing racist”, and this warranted further investigation.

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Coinbase is seeking SEC approval for ‘tokenized equities’ — Report

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Coinbase is seeking SEC approval for ‘tokenized equities’ — Report

Coinbase is seeking SEC approval for ‘tokenized equities’ — Report

If approved by the US regulator, the investment offering could have Coinbase competing against other stock trading platforms.

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