Champagne Shami!
Well, can you blame socialist cronies for resorting to drink...
JEREMY Corbyn’s supporters love to boast that they have got rid of the ‘champagne socialist’ image Labour gained in the heyday of Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson and their wealthy backers.
So it may come as a surprise to see a photograph of the Labour leader’s two leading female allies – peer Shami Chakrabarti and Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott – seated at a table with full champagne flutes.
The pair were caught on camera in the House of Lords’ exclusive Barry Room, where a bottle a House of Lords Brut costs £43, or £54 if guests push the boat out and plump for a 2002 vintage. Alternatively, a bottle of Prosecco Belstar will set diners back £25.50.
To make things worse, the picture emerged only two weeks after Baroness Chakrabarti and Ms Abbott were spotted drinking in another exclusive parliamentary bar, when they had been expected to attend a vital party meeting where MPs and peers held a post-mortem on the disastrous defeat at the Copeland
One of Westminster’s most exclusive venues
by-election. MPs singled out Lady Chakrabarti’s absence as only the day before she had angered Labour veterans by blaming the by-election defeat on the media, party disunity and the weather.
The claims infuriated many MPs, who branded them ‘pathetic excuses’ to shield Mr Corbyn from shouldering the real responsibility for the calamitous loss of a traditional Labour seat.
One said: ‘Shami could appear in front of the TV cameras to explain why we lost Copeland but somehow she can’t tell the Parliamentary Labour Party what went wrong.’
The taxpayer-subsidised Barry Room is one of the most exclusive restaurants in the Palace of Westminster. A three-course dinner for two with wine costs about £80.
The menu includes pigeon, seared scallops and cannon of beef. The same meal in a similar restaurant would cost closer to £120.
Ms Abbott and Lady Chakrabarti declined to comment last night.