![]() Shadow Cabinet ministers have been urged to attend as many dinners with prospective donors as possible, with the leader’s office sometimes pairing ministers with wealthy individuals. ![]() “He’s a lawyer … he’s learning his brief.” “The more he engages with people from the City, the more he feels comfortable with the vocabulary and the issues,” a department head at an investment bank said. His decision to attend the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos last month - and his comments that he prefers the gathering to Westminster - also reveal how comfortable Starmer is schmoozing with the global elite. Starmer is said to have become increasingly comfortable in these settings over the past 12 months as his status as prime minister-in-waiting - Labour is consistently polling 20 points ahead of the Tories - is further entrenched. Starmer and Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves have met hundreds of executives over the past year in what has been called the “salmon and scrambled eggs offensive” - a riff on Blair and his own Chancellor Gordon Brown’s so-called prawn cocktail offensive of the 1990s. Indeed, Labour’s biggest backer, the union Unite, has reduced its contributions to the party in retaliation for Starmer’s efforts to shift away from the socialist policies of Corbyn. Mandelson, meanwhile, told POLITICO “Labour needs many more individual donors” to “compensate for the sums currently being withheld by hard-left controlled unions.” “Businesses aren’t altruists - giving us all this money means that they will tend to want more movement towards the interests of business.” “What business will want, because they’re giving us all this money, is they’ll want results,” she said. Left-wing Labour MP Diane Abbott said Starmer “seems to be reverting to the worst practices of New Labour.” Blair and others involved have always claimed there was no connection between the two events. No one was ever charged with any wrongdoing.įor many, he is also indelibly linked to other New Labour cash scandals, including a row over a watered-down advertising ban for Formula 1 just after F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone gave millions to the party. He was at the center of a police investigation into the so-called cash for honors scandal in 2006, which saw claims that seats in the House of Lords were being offered in exchange for large unregistered loans to the Labour Party. ![]() He helped Labour raise £100 million from 1994 to 2007, before leaving when Blair resigned - and he still has deep links to Britain’s private sector.īut Levy’s comeback is not free of controversy. Levy’s return to the fold has also provided a big boost to Labour’s fundraising clout. One Labour MP described Alli as “absolutely lovely” and “very persuasive.” Referring to his status as one of the world’s only openly gay Muslim politicians, they added: “You should never underestimate someone from his background who has fought that hard for LGBT rights.” Former Prime Minister Tony Blair addresses Labour Party members in 2010 | Pool photo by Owen Humphreys/WPA via Getty Images “It’s serious people making a serious contribution to leveling the playing field with the Conservatives,” they said. One member of Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC), the party’s ruling body, said Alli is “a high net worth individual himself” which will “make quite a difference when he needs to tap people up to say ‘I’m giving money, you need to as well.'” He was given a peerage by Blair in 1998 and acted as an unofficial adviser to the former PM through his 10-year reign. The hire of Alli as chair of campaign financing was a particularly adroit decision, according to several MPs and party officials.Īlli, reportedly worth upward of £100 million, is plugged into to London’s arts, media and business sets. While Starmer is seen as more austere, he has embraced the former PM’s party financing strategy.Īfter three years of near-destitution - brought on by COVID-19, falling membership numbers and reduced union funding - the party is now beginning to look cashed-up. The 1997 quip by Mandelson that he was “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich as long as they pay their taxes” became something of guiding principle for the last Labour government’s fundraising efforts.īlair and some of his allies were caricatured as never being happier than when rubbing shoulders with Britain’s rich and powerful. “It also helps that Starmer is the first Labour leader since Blair to do it himself - he actually seems to enjoy fundraising.” Blair’s boys These are people that don’t have to be spending their time and money doing this,” a Labour shadow Cabinet minister said. “What it shows is that these guys think Keir is going to win. ![]()
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