PM is figure of fun in scarecrow festival and depicted made of tools

Sir Keir Starmer was the figure of fun at the UK's biggest scarecrow festival as villagers crafted a life-like effigy of Prime Minister in a suit stuffed with Premier League tickets. 

Villagers at the Belbroughton Scarecrow Festival dressed the model with glasses in a nod to the intense scrutiny of Sir Keir and his wife Victoria for accepting donations.

Donning Sir Keir's signature blue suit and burgundy tie, the competition entry depicts the PM with a rake head and holding a trowel and shovel in his hands, complete with a premier league ticket in his upper pocket.

The entry also contained a sign reading: 'My dad was a toolmaker. I am a tool... maker's son' - a nod to one of Sir Keir's election slogans. The festival's theme this year was 'Who Said That'.

Sir Keir was found to have declared more freebies than any other MP, having accepted gifts, benefits and hospitality topping £100,000 since December 2019.

Donations from Labour life peer Lord Waheed Alli included clothes, Arsenal matches and a Taylor Swift concert.

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Sir Keir has regularly mentioned his late father's profession and has made references to toolmaking at previous conference speeches, in interviews and in campaign material.

On his official website, under the heading 'My Childhood', the Prime Minister says 'My dad worked as a toolmaker in a factory, and my mum was a nurse for the NHS'. 

In a party election broadcast in April, Sir Keir described his father as being 'devoted to his trade'. 

And in a promotional Facebook video shared by the Labour Party in January 2023, Sir Keir said: 'My Dad was a toolmaker. He worked in a factory all his life.' 

The PM also made similar references during his keynote speech at last year's Labour conference and at his manifesto launch in June. 

Rodney Starmer, known as Rod, spent much of his time looking after Sir Keir's sick mother. He died in 2018, two years before his son would become Labour leader.

The Prime Minister told Sky News' Sophie Ridge in March that he regretted not having a closer relationship with his father.

Elsewhere at the the scarecrow festival was an effigy of Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator sporting a blowup machine gun.

The festival sees locals creating their favourite pop-culture figures out of straw, attracting over 30,000 spectators a year.

Harry Potter fans posed with the young wizard as he cast his expecto patronum charm to create his ghostly stag.

Meanwhile, children reacted to a giant straw shark leaping out of the garden of one crafty neighbour's home.

Parodies of Dolly Parton, former PM Winston Churchill and theoretical physicist Albert Einstein were also spotted around the village.

Founded by children's author Steve Haywood in 1996, the Belbroughton Scarecrow festival is held every September.