THE Labour Party was born from the 1900 Labour Representation Committee: rail and dock workers’ delegates persuaded the TUC to try increase representation of “Labour” — meaning the organised working people — in the House of Commons.  

The unions put in money and worked with leading socialists to find good potential MPs. By 1906 this union-backed group of socialists had enough parliamentary seats to rename themselves the Labour Party.

So what does it mean when corporate lobbyists fund the election of Labour MPs, and many of those MPs come from corporate backgrounds? Does this mean a Lobbyists Representation Committee has formed? Do they want Labour to represent their clients — in short , do they want the Labour Party to represent capital?

Take the example of the Lowick Group, one of the many lobbying companies now funding Labour. Lowick are a relatively new lobbying firm, founded in 2017 by Kevin McKeever, previously a partner at a larger lobbying company, Portland. 

Lowick offer to help clients navigate the “corridors of power.” For a fee, Lowick promise to give corporations “strategic advice on government relations,” including both “parliamentary engagement” and help with “local government,” especially “planning applications.”

The new post-election Register of MPs’ Interests shows Lowick paid £2,000 towards a fundraiser for Hitchin Labour MP Alistair Strathern in February, the funds helping his successful re-election campaign in July. 

Strathern is very much a “capital” man. Before becoming an MP, Strathern worked at the Bank of England for seven years, and for three years (2019-2022) at Oaknorth Bank. 

Oaknorth are quite a political bank — they hired Tory ex-chancellor Philip Hammond in 2020. Hammond was promptly scolded by regulators for breaking the rules and lobbying Treasury officials for Oaknorth. 

Strathern is now parliamentary private secretary — a junior, sub-ministerial post — jointly for Rachel Reeves and Ed Miliband on “green finance.”

Lowick helped fund two other Labour MPs from more traditional backgrounds. It put £2,000 towards a fundraising event for Michael Payne’s successful campaign to become Labour MP for Gedling, Nottinghamshire. Payne previously worked for the Labour Group on the Local Government Association. Lowick gave £2,500 to Deirdre Costigan’s successful Ealing Southall election campaign. Costigan was previously a Unison full-time officer.

Lowick aren’t the biggest lobbying firm backing Labour, but they were one of the earliest. Back in September 2022 Lowick gave then shadow business secretary Jonathan Reynolds a “free“ member of staff “on secondment” for two months, worth £4,000 to help Labour with “stakeholder management” — meaning relations with business. 

This was quite a coup for Lowick, putting them right in the middle of business relations with the future Labour government.

Lowick tries to square the circle of a lobbyist funding Labour by claiming they are especially sympathetic to the party: it says it’s a “consultancy that grew out of the labour movement.” 

The idea that the labour movement grows pro-corporate “consultancies” is novel. As Morning Star readers know in their bones, the labour movement is the broad, social network of trade unions, socialists and grassroots campaigners — the modern equivalent of the folk who made up the Labour Representation Committee all those years ago. 

But this is not who you find in Lowick’s group of clients: Lowick represent US banking giant JP Morgan, rail privatiser First Group and Water UK, the trade body for the private water industry. 

Lowick also represents Barrat Homes and a whole bunch of other private property developers.  

These are firms who want to make tough deals with the government in pursuit of profit, not part of the “labour movement.” Given their clients, when Lowick boasts about “a deep understanding of our new Labour government,” it looks like it’s using its Labour links as an advertising pitch to corporations who want to influence that government rather than a point of principle. 

Lowick’s “offer” is that “from politics to policy, the Labour Cabinet to this new generation of MPs, we are ideally placed to advise on the impact of the new Labour government and the opportunities for your organisation, wherever you do business in the UK.”  They are offering their “Labour” links to provide “opportunities” to “business.”

Lowick is one more small sign that there is a big section of Starmer’s support base that wants to use the Labour Party to build their corporate careers, to use Labour in Parliament to represent the lobbyists and their clients, not the labour movement.

Badenoch 
The Telegraph described Tory leadership candidate Kemi Badenoch MP as a “refreshingly direct communicator” with  “charisma and conviction.” Tory Badenoch fans agree, but it seems she needs  assistance to be a  “communicator”: she is relying on help from a lobbyist and former Theresa May aide to shape her political messaging.

In the latest Register of MP’s Interests Badenoch records getting free “strategic advice and training” from Shaya Raymond, worth £10,000 from March to June 2024, while she was still trade secretary under Sunak’s government.

Raymond was one of Theresa May’s research team back in the 2000s before starting his career as a lobbyist. Raymond currently works for Riverside Advisory, which is an offshoot of larger lobbying firm Pagefield Global: Pagefield do the more public lobbying for big companies, while Riverside provide more secretive “bespoke, discreet and high-end communications to private clients” offering “global reputation management” and “strategic communications counsel” delivered with “discretion.” Between from 2012-2017 Raymond worked at New Century, a lobbying firm known for working for Russian oligarchs including allies of Putin.

Badenoch relying on some private “strategic advice and training” suggests she thinks her own “charisma” and “communication” need help. The fact she was getting this free “comms” advice while a minister suggests she was thinking about how to position herself against other leading Tories, limbering up for a leadership run in the expectation her government would lose the election.