Hello and welcome back.
A quick housekeeping update before we dive into this week’s stories. Dark Arts has decided to split this newsletter into two – apparently, not everyone has the time or inclination to read 3,000 words on lobbying and influence in a single sitting every week, who knew?
You’ll now receive a primary Dark Arts story fairly regularly, which might be an exclusive news story or investigation like the one you received over the weekend, or perhaps a longform interview or extended piece of data analysis. Separately, you’ll also receive an email like this one, which we’re calling the Dark Arts Dispatch. This will contain a number of shorter, ‘quick hit’ stories of the kind that have generally appeared at the bottom of the newsletter.
Now, onto the good stuff.
Everything is going to be fine(s): Some weeks ago, I wrote about how chancellor Rachel Reeves views the role of the state as essentially a great big derisking machine. If ‘change’ is the goal of this Labour government, then investment is how it intends to pursue it. Specifically by using state capacity largely to supplement private investment in infrastructure. Dark Arts has well-documented criticisms of this approach, not least that the potential profits that make this investment appealing to the private sector in the first place – and make it ultimately more expensive than public investment – will in the end come out of our pockets.
With the International Investment Summit earlier this week, and the events surrounding it, we saw further evidence of just how central private investment and the private sector in general are to the government’s growth strategy, and the lengths it is prepared to go to in order to facilitate the private sector; whether that’s scrapping redtape, reining in the regulators or just publicly slapping down ministers.
But perhaps Dark Arts is underestimating the government? Perhaps there is an ulterior motive at play here, with Starmer and Co. laying out the red carpet for these firms only in anticipation of coming down hard on them once they’re through the door. Maybe the plan is to get them to invest and then make a load of money for the state by slapping them with whopping fines when they inevitably breach consumer, environmental and financial regulations. Probably not, but it would be hard to intentionally assemble a cast of companies better suited to this end than Labour seems to have managed incidentally.
The government put out a press release trumpeting the £63bn of private investment brought in by the summit and naming a couple of dozen companies as investors. Between them, these firms have been fined more than £300m since 2010, according to Dark Arts’ analysis of data compiled by the Violation Tracker UK, which documents enforcement actions brought against companies by government regulators. In total, the firms were responsible for 194 separate regulatory breaches, relating to issues ranging from aviation safety and oil drilling to labour standards and consumer protection.
Dark Arts readers will be unsurprised to learn that Macquarie was the worst offender, having been responsible for 128 regulatory breaches during that time. These mostly related to the firm’s stewardship of Southern Water, which saw it receive a record fine of £126m in 2019 for a water services violation and a further £90m fine in 2021 for a water pollution violation.
Notable exceptions among the investors include DP World, the owner of P&O ferries, which famously fired 800 crew members without warning in 2022, replacing them with lower-paid agency workers on longer hours. The company didn’t receive a fine for that debacle because its actions were, unbelievably, within the rules. Another investor, US pharma giant Eli Lilly, is also yet to run afoul of UK regulators, but may well look upon the infringements of its fellow investors and laugh; the firm has been fined more than $2.8bn by US regulators since 2000.
U-turn inbound?: The Times last week reported that Labour looks set to row back on plans to close a loophole that allows private equity firms to pay a significantly reduced rate of tax on their profits. This may ring a few bells for Dark Arts readers. Just before the election, I wrote about the major lobbying campaign waged by a group pushing back against the plan, the British Venture Capital and Private Equity Association, whose key lobbyist is a former Labour spad who worked alongside Ed Balls when he was shadow chancellor.
The Times’ report suggests the cause of the potential U-turn is a Treasury analysis that suggests the policy *could* be a net loss to tax receipts, as companies *might* choose to leave rather than pay their fair share. Perhaps this will indeed be the reason if the loophole ends up unclosed. But it could also be the more than £10m the financial sector has donated to the Labour Party in the past few years, as well as the secondments from banks, City consultants and lobbyists, and a key No 10 adviser who joined government directly from a firm that claims to represent “more than three-quarters of the top 20 private equity firms in the world”. Forgive my cynicism.
It’s a big (cricket) club, and you ain’t in it: As Labour’s ties to the corporate lobbying world come under increasing scrutiny, it’s always worth pointing out that the media also has a few questions to answer in this regard. Dark Arts is committed to shining a light on this underreported aspect of SW1 dynamics – career prospects be damned – as it may go some way to explaining why corporate lobbying (and the conflicts of interest that come with it) faces so little scrutiny from the press.
Last month saw the ‘hacks vs PRs’ cricket match, in which a lobby XI faces off against a lobbyist XI in a “fun annual fixture” organised by Charles Lewington, the chairman of Hanover Communications, a former comms director for the Conservatives and a journalist with the Express before that. Lewington – whose firm represents the interests of Amazon, Uber and Meta among others – “lays it on thick” for the day, according to a message sent around to Westminster hacks before the event. Generously provided for attendees and their families; free taxis, free food and, of course, a free bar. Dark Arts (right arm, medium-fast) did consider donning the whites for a day but decided against it on ethical and reputational grounds.
Party time: The cosy ties between lobbyists and the lobby don’t end there. Last month also saw a gathering of Westminster’s great and good at One Great George Street, a favoured schmoozing haunt, to celebrate the launch of a new book by Anushka Asthana, a former Guardian journalist, now of ITV News.
Asthana’s Taken As Red tells the tale of Labour’s election victory, as well as the longer story of the Starmer project in the years leading up to it, and some of the *slightly* cynical methods it deployed in the process. Perhaps then, it was only right that the book launch be hosted by a corporate lobbying firm, WPI Strategy – which hired one of Starmer’s former key advisers, Claire Ainsley, last year. Pics from the event show journalists, politicians of all stripes and corporate lobbyists having a marvellous time. But in SW1, pleasure and business go hand-in-hand; WPI director Nick Faith shared images from the event on LinkedIn, attracting a comment from a senior lobbyist at Google, to whom Faith replied saying it was great to have finally met her in person.
Oldknews: Some paths to the corporate public affairs world are all too well-trodden; few more so than those from politics and media. Far less common, though, is a move directly from the trade union movement and the world of organised labour straight into a role leading a major lobbying firm – a path that trailblazer Emilie Oldknow has nonetheless beat.
The former Labour official, who was involved in legal action against the party after her name featured prominently in a leaked report on antisemitism, has turned up at Hanbury Strategy. Oldknow will be the firm’s first CEO, after a stint in the general secretary’s office at the UK’s largest trade union, Unison, which has become the main union backer of Labour under Starmer’s leadership. Having notionally represented the interests of hundreds of thousands of low-paid workers at Unison, she will now represent the interests of clients including Blackstone, Citibank, Flutter and Amazon Web Services. Quite the career change.
Coming in at No 10: While the government does publish a list of ministers’ external meetings, this information generally takes at least six months to be made public. And Starmer’s government, much like the one before it, has made no suggestion about improving the transparency rules to include a requirement for special advisers’ meetings to be published, which was recommended by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee’s (PACAC) review of lobbying and transparency rules last year.
As referenced in my report over the weekend, No 10’s business and investment adviser, Varun Chandra – formerly of ‘spooky’ consultancy Hakluyt & Company – is one of the many Spads whose meetings will not be made public under the current rules. So Dark Arts has decided to try and keep ears, eyes and inbox open to document some of the corporate figures coming in and out of No 10’s famous big black door to meet with him.
In the past few weeks, this has included senior executives from financial industry lobbying body UK Finance, top bods from mega-warehousing firm Prologis (orchestrated by Connect Communications), the head of big four consultancy EY, the CEO of PayPal, and bosses at payments processing tech firm, Zilch.
PACAC it in: Speaking of PACAC’s report on lobbying… The recommendations put forward by the committee were almost entirely rejected by the former government, and there is no real indication that the new one is any more interested in them, despite some warm words from Cabinet Office secretary Pat McFadden while trying to bat away questions on Labour’s ‘freebiegate’ row.
Ten years on from the introduction of the deeply flawed Lobbying Act – with no serious reform since then and corporate influence over politics growing more and more powerful – lobbying and transparency are particularly important areas of interest for PACAC. So who will be leading the committee in its continued efforts to try to force the government into action on regulating the lobbying industry? One of Parliament’s many ex-lobbyists, of course. Simon Hoare, the Tory MP for North Dorset since 2015, is the new committee chair. Before entering Parliament, Hoare had a 20-year career in lobbying, including a stint running his own firm, Community Connect, and culminating with a directorship at Four Communications.
Friends reunited: Interestingly, since the last election, Hoare has been joined in Parliament by a former Four Communications colleague, albeit on the crowded benches opposite. Labour MP for Dartford Jim Dickson spent a number of years on the lobbying team at Four while serving as a Labour councillor in Lambeth.
Dark Arts missed Dickson when reporting on the lobbyist Labour candidates before the election, as according to his LinkedIn he left the firm in 2020. But the public affairs register, in which companies self-declare active practitioners each quarter, listed Dickson as either an employee or subcontractor as recently as May 2024. As an MP, Dickson must now declare his financial interests, and he lists a share in Four Communications worth more than £70,000 – making him, to Dark Arts’ knowledge, the only MP in Parliament with an active interest in a corporate lobbying firm. Quite the accolade.