Labour, Lord Alli and a Strange Transaction.
Labour has been embarrassed yet again by its association with Lord Alli but perhaps the party should be embarrassed most of all ...by Alli's chequered business track record.
Another week. Another Lord Alli scandal.
Last month the press was in high dudgeon about a free pass Labour admitted giving to Waheed Alli to come and go as he pleased to 10 Downing St. It was apparently all a huge mistake. Or something.
I’ve no animus against Alli. On the other hand unlike the Labour party I didn’t spend the last decade and a half moaning about corporate executives who reward themselves handsomely while loading British firms with unsustainable debt. Yet that’s what his critics allege Lord Alli has done. And more than once. More of that in a second.
There’s lots to admire about Lord Alli. His life story of (comparative) rags to riches is one we associate more with America’s can do society than Blighty’s. He also appears to be unfailingly charming. Unlike other iconic self-made capitalists like the ghastly Sir Philip Green.
Since he allows few interviews this assessment is admittedly informed by my meeting him just once at a posh gay garden party. Many years ago and in the depths of Kent I hasten to add. Not in Downing St where it’s alleged Alli organised a fundraiser for party donors and their guests. Kerching.
In person, I’m happy to report, Alli was perfectly civil and didn’t even talk about himself all night. At a party full of gay men that might be called an achievement. He hit the headlines last month, when he was identified as one of a new circle of Labour cronies who are apparently evidence of ….“sleaze rotting our politics to the core.”
You could be forgiven for thinking the last fourteen years had been some sort of sleaze free zone. Alli’s access all areas pass drew attention to the fact he’d donated an estimated £1.3m to the Labour Party itself and selected Labour MPs including c£50k to Keir Starmer as well as gifts of clothes and glasses. The latter meant the scandal was inevitably dubbed …….‘Passes for Glasses’.
Alli has now been accused of donating high end clothes to Starmer’s wife. This followed fast on last week’s claims that he had made recommendations for public appointments.
This is all getting a bit de ja vu all over again. Didn’t Starmer promise to clean up politics and blow away any whiff of nudge nudge influence wielded by the rich and powerful? He did.
Instead these disparate stories suggest, despite all its pre-election rhetoric, that Labour is prepared to fluff the minted among us and add to the suspicion its policies may be available to the highest bidder.
The party, for example, received £6m in donations in the last year from performatively green donors like Dale Vince, “the green energy tycoon”. The fact the government has now refused to defend plans for a new coal mine in Cumbria or licenses to extract oil from new fields in the North Sea is of course entirely unconnected to the green gravy train. If only unemployed miners or oil workers had donated £6m perhaps they’d have been in with a chance of a job.
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Back to …..the story no one else is telling you about Lord Alli.
As for Lord Alli, one possible explanation for his free pass came from Henry Newman, the easy on the eye gay ‘special advisor’ to Michael Gove, who later joined Boris Johnson’s team in Downing St, perhaps at the instigation of Carrie Johnson with whom he was besties. Who says the Tories didn’t bequeath Labour a template for cronyism?
Newman speculated that Alli was given the pass because he was organising a garden party for donors.
If he’s right about that, this probably explains Labour ministers’ palbable anxiety whenever they are interviewed about Alli’s pass. They know the party’s supporters, busy adjusting to a new line in miserabilism and welfare cuts from Rachel Reeves, are likely to be perturbed by the thought of ministers slurping champers and sucking up to the insanely rich just weeks after being elected.
All this was entirely predictable though.
In December 2023 ‘Tatler’ reported that Alli had been tasked by Labour with coralling the super-wealthy and their money.
Alli was spearheading the effort, we were told, to “reinvigorate the party’s Rose Network” of super-rich donors. Where better to shakedown donations from the Rose Network than the Downing St Rose Garden? There is a small problem though which Alli’s free pass ignored. Downing St belongs to the taxpayer not the Labour Party. Using government property to raise funds there isn’t allowed.
No one is saying that Alli rented out attendance at his alleged garden party. Or not yet they aren’t. Party members may want some assurance though that all the bees who were drawn to the honeypot of the Rose Network were beyond reproach. Tatler revealed one wannabe donor who might not pass that test. Mohamed Amersi “the telecoms tycoon” said he was “planning to fund some individual Labour MPs”.
“Whenever I feel a new MP is entering the fray- young dynamic, ambitious- then I want to support them”, said Amersi, reeking of nothing but raw altruism.
In September 2023 the Independent reported that Labour would allow Amersi to donate to individual MPs but not the party. This indecision may be explained by Amersi’s noisy, two year legal battle with the BBC about allegations he was involved in a massive corruption scandal involving a couple of those beacons of transparency ….Russia and Uzbekistan.
When the Conservartives took £700k from Amersi no one was more forthright in their criticism than Labour Party spokespeople who demanded the party return the cash.
And yet as the election loomed last year Labour seemed no longer to disavow Amersi. He could donate to individual MPs said the party.
Perhaps Lord Alli could be forgiven then for being confused about the rules he was supposed to follow in the shadowy world of gifts, political donations and influence. Some though claim he may have mastered the ability to be a tad slippery regarding moral boundaries long ago.