Slow news, political lobbying, and MPs’ register of financial interests

Fitzrovia-based “slow news” publisher Tortoise Media has been mulling over a lengthy article by investigative journalist Peter Geoghegan on political lobbying and the influence of think tank Labour Together along with its donations to new MPs.

Geoghegan’s article is well worth a read. Labour raised more money from donations ahead of this year’s general election than all the other parties put together. But the party’s “record haul of donations doesn’t include the millions that have flowed into Labour Together, probably the most influential political organisation that most voters have never heard of”, writes Geoghegan.

“At the party conference last year, Starmer told a ‘business forum’ of more than two hundred executives and lobbyists that ‘if we do come into government, you will be coming into government with us’.

“The closer Labour got to power, the closer the business lobby got to Labour,” he says.

The Tortoise podcast episode (listen from 13:38) discusses the £370,000 that was used to fund staff for the shadow cabinet by Labour Together in the run up to the election, and the £827,000 that has been declared collectively by Labour MPs in donations and revealed in the recently published Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Tortoise discuss Geoghegan’s description of Labour Together as a “Super PAC” — a US-style funding vehicle for political candidates — which has raised more than £4mn in the last 18 months. There’s more on this subject in a Tortoise article about how Labour party supporters “have been given senior roles in the supposedly impartial civil service”.

Incoming MP for Cities of London and Westminster Rachel Blake received a donation of £10,000 from Labour Together, according to the register of interests. And so did outgoing West End ward councillor Jessica Toale who received a smaller donation of £5,000 after winning the parliamentary seat of Bournemouth West.

Georgia Gould, former leader of Camden Council and newly elected MP for Queen’s Park and Maida Vale did not receive any gift from Labour Together. However, she did receive £2,000 from Trevor Chinn (one of the biggest funders of Labour Together) according to her entry in the register. She holds the role of parliamentary secretary to the Cabinet Office.

Prime minister Keir Starmer, MP for Holborn and St Pancras, has no record of donations from Labour Together listed in his register. But Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief political aide, is a former director of Labour Together.

Geoghegan points out that Starmer “has accepted £76,000 worth of gifts since 2019, including £16,200 of ‘work clothing’ from the Labour peer Waheed Alli” and that the prime minister seems “oddly naive” about private donations and the influence it has on politics.

The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, which has an office in Great Portland Street, Fitzrovia, “provided free advice to Starmer and his shadow cabinet”, says Geoghegan.

The advisory firm Global Counsel, run by former Labour MP Peter Mandelson, paid £35,835 for one of its staff members to be seconded to do support work in the office of Tulip Siddiq, MP for Hampstead and Highgate, according to the her entry in the register of interests.

Siddiq, a treasury minister and a former councillor for Regent’s Park ward in Camden, made an “inadvertent” error when she failed to declare an income from a property and was cleared by the parliamentary commissioner for any wrongdoing. She apologised and belatedly updated her details on the register. However, she now faces new questions about another property.

Labour Together also ran into conflict with electoral law by failing to declare £700,000 worth of donations and was fined £14,250 in 2023.

Geoghegan says that Labour has become “very reliant on freebies from business” and there exists a “US-style scenario in which a handful of super-rich donors effectively bankroll the entire political system”.

Labour and the Lobbyists, by Peter Geoghegan, published on the London Review of Books. A shorter version of his article is on his Substack newsletter. Labour’s ‘first SuperPAC’ is just getting started, by Catherine Neilan, published by Tortoise.