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.
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.