Sir Keir Starmer faces a fresh backlash over his relationship with Lord Alli because of the role played by one of the donor’s former staff members in choosing prospective Labour MPs.
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”.
It came as Lucy Powell, the Leader of the Commons, said Labour would not change the rules around MPs accepting so-called freebies.
The Labour Party conference has been overshadowed by a row over Lord Alli’s donations to Sir Keir Starmer to buy clothes and spectacles. Lord Alli was given a Downing Street security pass in what has been dubbed the “passes for glasses” controversy.
He is attending the conference but has kept a low profile, shunning the main conference hall and fringe events. On Monday afternoon he was spotted leaving the conference secure zone, when he walked past Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, who did not acknowledge him.
When a reporter for Sky News asked him about the controversy, he said: “Please don’t – this is not very nice.”
Some Labour members are angry that Lord Alli’s influence appears to have extended to the selection of Labour candidates, many of whom are now MPs.
Mark Seddon, a former Labour candidate who served on the NEC and is now director of the Centre for United Nations Studies at the University of Buckingham, said on X: “The same Matt Faulding who fixed the selections is now Secretary of the Parliamentary Labour Party, keeping them all in check. Rotten to the core.”
The journalist Michael Crick reported before the election that candidates parachuted into constituencies included 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; and Luke Akehurst, MP for North Durham, who was seen as Sir Keir’s enforcer on the NEC.
Sir Keir had previously promised not to impose candidates on local party associations, but during the general election he was accused of breaking that promise and “riding roughshod” over the wishes of members.
‘Starmtroopers’
Those on the Left of the party accused him of flooding the country with “Starmtroopers” to purge Labour of anyone deemed to have diverged from the party line.
Some members resigned in disgust after having candidates imposed from above rather than being able to interview and select their own candidates.
Mr Faulding, 35, was a deputy director of Progress, the Left-wing think tank, and was also a director of the Lowick Group, a strategic communications consultancy, before he worked for Lord Alli.
‘We want to be transparent’
At a Labour conference fringe event on standards in public life, Ms Powell said she would “very strongly refute” the suggestion that the Government was “in hock” to “vested interests”.
“Campaigning is an expensive business and you do have to raise money. That’s why there are quite tight rules around that and people have fallen foul of it. So perhaps that’s just sort of how things are at the moment and [we have] no plans to change that.”
She acknowledged there were still “many” issues around “culture and behaviour” in politics.
But she said Labour politicians held themselves to higher standards than the Tories, which was “why we are transparent, and we want to be even more transparent around some of these things as well”.
Defending her own record on taking handouts, she said the “vast majority of the so-called freebies” she had accepted were “attending official events” in her former role as the shadow culture secretary.
Lord Alli and the Labour Party were both contacted for comment.
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