After Reform supporters spent the week claiming that Green Party MP Hannah Spencer wore a £1,500 Gucci silk shirt to PMQs when she told Parliament there was “plenty of dirty grubbiness” behind her, Spencer has posted an Instagram video to address the matter. She is holding the shirt. She zooms in on the label. The brand is Costa Brava. She got it from Oxfam approximately 15 years ago, when she volunteered at Oxfam Originals. “I know Jesus is out there turning water into wine,” she said. “But hun, I’m out here turning charity shop finds into designer clobber.”
The video is magnificent.
What happened at PMQs – and what came after
As we reported in our Hannah Spencer PMQs piece, Spencer – the former plumber who won Gorton and Denton for the Greens – stood up at PMQs to ask about VAT cuts for the hospitality industry and noted, in passing, that running a plumbing business had made her “well used to dealing with dirty grubbiness – and there is still plenty of that dirty grubbiness behind me.” She was looking at Keir Starmer. She was describing the Reform benches.
The line landed. Reform’s faces, by multiple accounts, were a picture. The clip circulated widely. And then Reform supporters on social media decided that the appropriate response to being called dirty and grubby was to attack her blouse.
@claire_adams694: “Nothing says ‘fight the wealthy elite’ quite like delivering the lecture in a Gucci blouse. We see you.”
@BlobWarriorUK: “PMQs Hannah Spencer, millionaire plumber of the decade and darling of Green party communism wears a £1500 Gucci silk shirt. Plenty for me but not for thee!”
At the time, @annaroseridgway – who opened her rebuttal by noting she was “no fan of Hannah Spencer’s politics” – examined the shirt closely and concluded it was “clearly not a Gucci shirt – it doesn’t have the monogram or logo on it and does not look like a Gucci shirt. It is most likely just a vintage horsebit print shirt and I am guessing she bought it not in Knightsbridge, but from one of the many vintage shops in Manchester.”
The Instagram video
Spencer’s response, delivered to camera on Instagram, is worth quoting in full.
“So this shirt. That I wore in Parliament this week. I got it about 15 years ago from Oxfam, when I volunteered at Oxfam Originals. I love it. But something phenomenal happened this week when I wore it at Prime Minister’s Questions. It underwent a remarkable transformation. It went from being a charity shop find to apparently being a two thousand pound Gucci shirt.”
“At least that’s what the establishment are saying. And it wouldn’t be like them to lie, would it? Why would they spread misinformation about me? Why would they do that? Why would they want to discredit me?”
She then zoomed in on the label.
“To the charity shops, the vintage shops, anyone selling pre-loved stuff like this – thank you. To Costa Brava…”
She held the label up to camera.
“That very well-known designer brand, thank you as well. And to everyone else – send me your stuff. Because I know Jesus is out there turning water into wine. But hun, I’m out here turning charity shop finds into designer clobber.”
The Costa Brava defence
Costa Brava is not a high fashion house. It is not Gucci. It is, by any measure, precisely what a shirt bought from Oxfam fifteen years ago by someone who volunteered there would be. Spencer’s response is pitch-perfect not just because it proves the specific claim wrong – it was always easily disprovable, which is presumably why nobody who made it bothered to look at the label before posting – but because it makes the wider point cleanly and with a degree of wit that the people attacking her singularly failed to demonstrate.
The Reform supporters who called it Gucci were not engaging with the substance of her PMQs question, which was about VAT cuts for the hospitality industry. They were not engaging with the “dirty grubbiness” line, which they were clearly smarting from. They were attacking her for the crime of appearing in Parliament wearing something she liked. As @AnnaSchurer asked at the time: “How many male MPs are commonly attacked on what they wear? Thought so.”
Spencer’s answer to that question – to produce the Oxfam receipt in Instagram video form, essentially, and finish with a line about Jesus and water – is the correct register for the correct moment.
The broader point
Spencer volunteered at Oxfam Originals. She bought a shirt there fifteen years ago. She still wears it. She went to Parliament in it. She was called the “millionaire plumber of the decade” wearing a “£1,500 Gucci silk shirt” by people who were angry about being called dirty and grubby.
This week, Nigel Farage said “so what?” to his Makerfield candidate calling himself a sexist and endorsing a graphic sexual comment about Carol Vorderman. The same political ecosystem that produced that response also produced the Gucci shirt claim. Both were wrong. One was two words. The other was a label.
Spencer zoomed in on the label. The label said Costa Brava.
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