Lord Alli’s election fixer was lobby firm director with links to Corbyn coup-plotters Portland Communications

This article was updated at 10pm on 24 September to reflect an error. It previously stated that Steve Race worked for Portland Communications. This was incorrect. He worked for lobbying firm FleishmanHillard.

Labour peer Lord Waheed Alli’s MP candidate election fixer Matthew Faulding worked for a lobbying firm with deep ties to the Labour right. Notably, this includes links to another notorious lobbying corporation – Portland Communications – that played a role in orchestrating the coup against former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. It shows how Labour peer Lord Alli’s donation saga barely scratches the surface of the Labour right’s entrenched corporate cronyism.

Lord Alli and Starmer’s MP candidate fixer

As the Telegraph reported:

Matthew Faulding, who was in charge of candidate selection for this year’s general election, worked in Lord Alli’s office on secondment from his firm BM Creative Management in the months before the poll.

He was blamed by critics of Sir Keir for “parachuting” favoured candidates into constituencies, imposing them on local Labour associations. He is now secretary of the Parliamentary Labour Party, “keeping them all in check” according to one former member of Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC), who described the arrangement as “rotten to the core”.

Notably, parachuted candidates included the likes of self-professed “Zionist shitlord” and National Executive Committee (NEC) member Luke Akehurst for instance. The Telegraph rattled off a list of Faulding’s fixed candidates, as revealed by UnHerd journalist Michael Crick, including:

Josh Simons, the former director of the Starmerite think tank Labour Together who is now MP for Makerfield; Calvin Bailey, MP for Leyton and Wanstead; James Asser, former chair of the NEC and now MP for West Ham and Beckton

However, there was also one other critical detail that unveiled the can of corporatist worms writhing at the heart of the Labour right’s rotten core.

Specifically, the Telegraph also noted Faulding’s former role with lobbying firm Lowick Group.

Lowick: the new Labour right lobby kid on the block

Faulding was director of the lobbying corporation between August 2018 and February 2021.

Unsurprisingly, the firm has lobbied for a Who’s Who of big polluters. Clients include large property developers like Barratt Homes, multinational investment banking giant JP Morgan, and water industry lobby group Water UK, among other titans from the corporate world.

It provided consultancy and lobbying services for these companies as recently as between March and the end of May this year. However, the company didn’t disclose its clients while Faulding worked for the firm.

Of course, these also happen to be the industries Starmer’s corporate-captured Labour Party has been courting. Moreover, there’s a litany of links between the Labour right and many of these sectors already. For instance, the Canary previously highlighted the intricate network of water industry lobbyists at work with Labour connections.

One just so happened to be a lobbyist with Lowick. This was Dan Bewley, who stood for the Labour Party in this year’s general election. He wasn’t elected to parliament, but it hasn’t stopped Lowick supporting a slate of other MPs who were.

The latest register of interests shows that Lowick gave £6,500 to three Labour MPs – two entirely new to parliament this year. It included green capitalist Alistair Strathern. Strathern previously worked as a climate lead at the Bank of England, and held other former banking sector roles. He’s now parliamentary private secretary to both chancellor Rachel Reeves and environment secretary Ed Miliband.

What’s more, like Faulding, Lowick seconded an employee to Labour. It sent Lucas Short to work for then shadow business secretary Jonathan Reynolds’ office in 2022. Across three months, Short provided nearly £4,000 worth of free assistance to Reynolds. Then, while still working Lowick Short had a brief contract for the Labour Party’s 2024 election campaign at its regional head office in London.

Lobbyist firm that “grew out of the Labour movement”?

However, the ties run much deeper than this. Lowick self-describes itself as:

A consultancy that grew out of the Labour movement with a deep understanding of our new Labour government

As the Morning Star has pointed out on this, it’s a seemingly “novel” idea for a lobbying firm to emerge from the Labour movement – traditionally as the outlet noted, comprised of:

the broad, social network of trade unions, socialists and grassroots campaigners

Obviously, it isn’t Labour’s working class, socialist roots that Lowick is referring to. That becomes manifestly clear when you dig into where Lowick actually originated from. Predictably for a firm shilling for the corporate capitalist establishment, it was the Labour right.

Crucially, former partner at lobbying firm Portland Communications Kevin McKeever set up the firm in 2017. As the Canary’s Steve Topple revealed in 2016, the Portland had an intimate web of figures with high-profile links to the right of the party. Significantly, Topple exposed how Portland played a central role in orchestrating the 2016 coup attempt against Jeremy Corbyn, alongside the Fabian Society.

But if that weren’t damning enough, McKeever himself was also embroiled in all this too. Topple highlighted how the Portland partner, alongside multiple other employees, had direct links to the party. Alongside his Portland colleague Gregor Poynton on Twitter, they were:

actively promoting the campaign against Corbyn. Retweeting each other, sharing the same video footage of Alastair Campbell – with McKeever writing in his local newspaper and even creating a short film of the Momentum rally at Parliament Square on Monday

Blair era cash-for-access connections

Topple also wrote how McKeever had supported Andy Burnham’s bid for Labour leadership. Meanwhile, then-Portland exec Gregor Poynton had backed now-DWP boss Liz Kendall. Funnily enough, this also just so happens to be who Lord Alli sponsored during the leadership race too. At the time, he donated £26,500 to the pair.

Poynton had stood to be candidates in the 2015 general election, but neither were elected.

Fast forward to 2024, and he i now sitting in parliament.

Prior to the election, Poynton had similarly left Portland for high-flying roles at other infamous lobbying firms. Poynton has been a partner at consultancy firm Headland. Naturally, both have a client roster of big polluting industries. For example, the Canary also highlighted both firms in its investigation into the private water sector.

Again, it’s currently unclear if Faulding played a part in their selections. However, his links to Lord Alli and McKeever throws the revolving door of Labour right lobbyists, donors, and opaque think tanks and organisations into the spotlight once more.

The Labour right’s litany of lobbyist links via Lord Alli

Needless to say then, multimillionaire Lord Alli’s donor influence is about a lot more than some “glasses for passes”. The nexus of ties between him, Faulding, and the lynchpins of the Labour right make this donor debacle something more nefarious. Worst of all, there’s plenty more where all this came from too.

Lord Alli’s gifts and donations have underscored the deeply embedded plethora of lobbyist and dark money think tank links. Most significantly of all, this is about how that nexus utilises a swathe of levers to subvert democracy for vested capitalist interests.

Ultimately, #FreeGearKeir and his freebie flaunting cabinet are just the tip of the influencing iceberg, sitting beneath the dark turbulent sea of the Labour right’s ocean of corporate capitalist connections.

Featured image via the Canary