US star Taylor Swift got a special police escort for her London concerts after an alleged suicide attack plot led to the cancellation of three performances in Vienna. Culture Minister Lisa Nandy denied the singer was given preferential treatment, after reports she had a motorbike escort usually reserved for senior members of the royal family and politicians. Her denial comes with the new Labor government under attack for accepting free gifts, including Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who was given six tickets to the Swift concert.

Starmer, who attended the concert with his wife Victoria, announced last week that he had repaid thousands of pounds worth of gifts including the concert tickets. But Nandy said the police escort, first reported by The Sun newspaper, was not the result of pressure from senior politicians. “I utterly reject that there’s been any kind of wrongdoing or undue influence in this case,” she told Sky News television.

The interior minister, Yvette Cooper, would not have insisted “any individual got the top level of private security arrangements. That is an operational matter for the police, not for the government,” she said. Other Labor politicians who enjoyed free tickets for the “Eras” tour shows included Education Minister Bridget Phillipson, London Mayor Sadiq Khan and Nandy herself. The Swift tour wrapped up its European leg in August in London following dates across a dozen countries. The last month of the Europe tour, however, was marred by the thwarted Austria attack, with authorities there revealing that an Islamic State sympathizer was planning a deadly attack at a concert in Vienna.

Three suspects were detained and all three August concert dates in Vienna were cancelled after an investigation conducted with the help of US intelligence. According to The Sun report, Swift’s mother and manager threatened to axe the London shows in August unless she received the police escort. It alleged that the Met Police agreed after “personal interventions from Cooper and Khan”, stressing that any cancellation would be “economically damaging and embarrassing”.

The Swift tour had been forecast to boost the UK economy by almost £1 billion ($1.3 billion), Barclays bank said in a study entitled “Swiftonomics”. London’s Metropolitan Police told AFP the force was “operationally independent” with decisions taken on the basis of a “thorough assessment of threat, risk and harm and the circumstances of each case”. — AFP