UK

Lobbyists and corporate sponsors were everywhere at the Labour conference

It’s been clear for a while that Keir Starmer’s Labour is embracing big business. Its conference confirmed it

STARMERS NEW LABOUR ARE RED TORIES

Ruby Lott-Lavigna
12 October 2023

Labour conference made clear the party is embracing lobbying and big business |
Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

“God loves repentant sinners,” shadow health secretary Wes Streeting joked at a Labour Party Conference event this week.

He was responding to a question about Policy Exchange, the Tory-linked think tank that was hosting the talk, as well as others throughout the week. An unfazed Streeting welcomed its presence, saying he was glad to see it had come to the place where the “intellectual energy and ideas are”.

Policy Exchange was co-founded in 2002 by Michael Gove and has a close relationship with the Conservative government. But here it was in Liverpool, holding talks with Labour’s shadow cabinet.

It’s been clear for a while that Keir Starmer’s Labour is embracing big business, and this year's conference bore that out. According to the National Executive Committee, Labour’s governing body, “business day” received double the revenue of last year’s, with double the attendance – and many more on the waiting list

But it goes further. From events sponsored by American pharmaceutical companies, housing developers or arms firms to right-wing think tanks, lobbying was front and centre at the conference.

Just as it did a week earlier at the Conservative Party Conference, Policy Exchange hosted numerous events. openDemocracy revealed last year that the think tank had helped write the UK’s controversial Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act after urging the government to pass legislation targeting Extinction Rebellion in a 2019 report. It does not disclose its UK funders, but an investigation by this website in 2022 found it had taken cash from US oil giant ExxonMobil.

It was also given the lowest possible transparency rating in openDemocracy’s ‘Who Funds You?’ project earlier this year, and has ties to the current net zero minister Claire Coutinho.

Not to be outdone, right-wing think tank the Adam Smith Institute (ASI) said at a conference event on Sunday that it was set to announce a Labour peer as a patron. Days after openDemocracy reported the comment, the ASI released a statement praising Starmer’s speech, saying he “put forward a serious, innovation-focused, positive vision for the country”.

And alongside the think tanks, corporate sponsorship was rife. As we revealed last month, fringe events were sponsored by arms manufacturers, fossil fuel companies and a spy-tech firm. Other sponsors included property developers, the National Residential Landlord Association, cryptocurrency firms, and pharma companies.

AbbVie, an American pharmaceutical company, sponsored a talk entitled ‘How Labour can prevent a two-tier system, increase NHS capacity and improve outcomes for all major conditions’. The panel featured a representative from the company.

This is a company that unsuccessfully launched legal proceedings against the NHS claiming it had breached procurement rules and treated the company unfairly. It has also received criticism for its medicine pricing in the US.

What’s in it for them? Companies that sponsor events are able to have representatives on the panel and can request certain questions be asked by the chair. But it doesn’t always go unnoticed.

In a talk sponsored by spy-tech firm Palantir on the Ukraine war, an audience member accused the panel, which featured the company’s executive vice president for technology, of “human-rights-washing”. Palantir, whose owner has donated to Donald Trump’s political campaign, has built software to support drone strikes and immigration raids.

Audience members also raised concerns in talks sponsored by fossil fuel companies. In a Cadent-sponsored event, there was a heated discussion when the company was challenged by an audience member on the environmental benefits of hydrogen gas. In another, audience members were removed after objecting to the presence on a panel of Offshore Energies UK, an energy lobbying company that supported the Rosebank oil field development.

If the Labour Party is, as widely predicted, the government-in-waiting, then these relationships are going to prove pivotal in the coming years. That's why it's important to take note of what's happening now.